Lingfield Youth Hub

Reverend Ian Whitely and I got talking last year about starting up a Youth Hub for 11-17-year-old boys and girls, from Lingfield village and the surrounding area, having just welcomed out transitioning Year 6’s.

By Bernadette Chipp-Smith

In March 2023 we finally opened our doors with a small grant from Lingfield parish council and are now running every Wednesday 4pm-6.30pm. The Victoria Sports and Social Club have kindly allowed us to use their halls and we have core volunteer Youth Leaders, Ian Whitely, Katie Montgomery, Charlotte Swann, Liz Lockwood, Kellie Love, India Love and Summer Harrison who help put the important group together each week.

We offer life skills to all that join us and have just got funding for cooking apparatus to teach cooking, ironing boards and irons to teach ironing, sewing machines and for the gamers we have board games and an original X-Box and PS4. We have various sports equipment for sports such as badminton, football, volleyball, cricket and we also play dodgeball and various other team games. We also have a table tennis table and access to pool tables and foosball tables – so there isn’t a lot the kids won’t be able to do. We have done pizza-making nights as well which are all free and Kellie Love offers a free taster session for taekwondo every Wednesday at 6:00 pm for our young people.

We have held a sushi night where our young people got to try sushi, some for the first time, this was donated by Sue Foulds from Sue Shi, we have had a number of computers donated to us from Daren Cridge of Daren Cridge Real Estate, and Sean Coughlan of Coughlans Bakers donates his products to our young people every Wednesday, so a big thank you to these three wonderful people.

So why not come and see us at The Victoria Sports and Social Club, your first visit is always free and then after that, we ask for £1. Our aim is to allow young people to have their own space to laugh chat and socialise and hopefully give new opportunities to.

Find us on Facebook at @lingfieldyouthclub