ANOTHER RECORD YEAR
The Kenilworth Centre charity has grown its income for the sixth successive year. After two difficult years following the withdrawal of funding from the Town Council, we are now demonstrating that we can be financially self-sustaining without dependence on external core grant funding.
Here are some of the key messages from the Annual General Meeting held at the Centre on the 19th September, attended by the Mayor and other community partners.
Although the Kenilworth Centre is here to serve the whole community, our key focus will always be on young people. In the previous twelve months our professional youth workers have had over 1700 interactions with young people through our youth clubs, over 2700 engagements with young people from the detached youth work in places like Abbey Fields and Castle Farm, and supported 116 young people through our one-to-one mentoring programme. The overall youth engagement offer was expanded considerably in 2017/18 with the introduction of new short courses – First Aid, Imagineering, Babysitting and Mindfulness – and will be developed further in the coming year.
Trustees expressed their support for the Mayor’s new initiative on young people, and our intent that the Kenilworth Centre should play a central role in achieving common objectives in this area, together with other community partners.
The services and facilities available at the Centre are being reviewed, with customers and community partners being surveyed to provide their perspectives to help guide decision making.
The Radio Abbey community radio station, based at the Centre, has been re-launched, with an expanding team of presenters and a clearer community focus. The Radio Abbey team will be hosting before and after the Round Table Fireworks at the Castle event again this year.