Kingstanding Carnival - Saturday August 5th
We are hosting a float and stand at the Kingstanding Carnival. We have had numerous organisation obstacles along the way so please pray that we are able to get an effective team of leaders and young people together. We see this as an exciting opportunity to both engage with, and raise our profile, in the community. We are planning to have graffiti art backdrops and utilise the 'Stomp' style percussion that we have been teaching in Perry Common Junior School. Pray particularly for Mel as she coordinates the project.

THIS WEEK

This week we have important meetings with the Perry Common Regeneration Forum and the College & Community Project.

This is the last week of term so pray for us as we gear up for our summer activities and pray for the young people in schools who are transitioning from one school or school year to the next.

We also say au revoir to Matt Lilley and Amy Graham who are moving onto pastures anew to continue being legends in all that God calls them to.

July Update
We haven't updated you in a while so brace yourselves for a lot of information!

Secondary Schools
Since we last posted we have had two very successful days in a local secondary school delivering sexual health and relationships lessons. Our relationship with the school has developed significantly over the past year to the point where we have real favour. We are currently running a group for young people in the school who are interested in God, we are assisting with some PE lessons, we are developing a Christian Ethics program to fit inside their Personal Social & Health educational syllabus and we are involved in running a summer school to transition some children from primary to secondary education.

Primary Schools
Our primary work continues to progress with the development of an Industrial Beat club and partnering with a local school's forestry teaching with some environmental projects. We are looking to hold a special drop-in club over the summer to allow those moving into Year 6 the opportunity to spend time in the youth club environment before they become active members of the club in September

Kids Club
We continue to see new children coming along to Kids Club. Over the past couple of months we have begun home visiting and as a result are getting to know some of the parents better. We are planning a Family Fun Day in August and hope to build on these relationships. We have had some friendship issues amongst the children that has caused some tension between a couple of the parents so please pray that God would bring peace to these situations and draw them to Him.

Drop-In Clubs
Due to electrical problems we had to close down the clubs for two weeks. Whilst this was a shame we had some significant relational time with some of the young people. We have lots of young people in the transition age between the two clubs and some have begun to filter through to the older age group. This has coincided with some of our older young people moving on from the club environment. As a result we have a completely different set of young people in the Tuesday club to those who were around before Christmas. Please pray that we would be able to sustain these relationships. At the moment the primary connection points with the older young people is through detached work, living in the community and Wednesday evening football with Sam and Andy.

Summer Activities
We are currently devising our summer program. This includes two complementary single sex community care projects for which we ahev successfully applied for funding. We will be working with 8 young men and 8 young women from across the community to directly impact one of the council estates in our area. We will then take them away for a residential trip in a rural location. This should be a fantastic opportunity for building relationships with the young people. We are also planning to run some Skills sessions (graffiti art, DJing etc) as well as our usual clubs and holiday activities.

Team
Matt and Amy G will shortly be moving on to pastures anew. They have been fantastic members of our time this year and will be sorely missed by the rest of us and the young people. Please pray heaps of blessing on them whilst also praying for wisdom in how to bring closure to their relationships with the young people. From the start of the next academic year we will have a core team of Amy K, Andy, Mel and Sam along with several amazing volunteers. We have a couple of potential additions to the team so please pray that God would speak to them and to us! In order to sustain and develop our existing projects we realistically need a couple more committed volunteers - particularly another male! We have also applied for some funding this summer to assist us with our team development.

Thank you so much for your continued prayer support. Please keep praying and reply to this post if you feel God is speaking to you about UDB.

Love,
Andy