Free online martial arts class running for young people in Aylesbury
Youth Concern are running the virtual course for locals
Young people in Aylesbury are being encouraged to join the online course.
Youth Concern has launched an online course in Martial Arts for Young People in Aylesbury with Safari Mixed Martial Arts.
16-25 year olds are being offered the chance to join a weekly class, Tuesdays at 8pm for men (with a male instructor) and Wednesdays at 6pm for women (with a female instructor).
Khadijah from Safari MMA says the course gives young people transferrable skills for their lives:
"It's knowing if you can achieve a hurdle in martial arts you can achieve a hurdle in life.
"For us its about looking at individuals and seeing what their struggle is and finding a way for them to beat it. Knowing that the only person they beat was themselves, who they were yesterday.
"We are based in Milton Keynes so anyone who comes through Youth Concern should be able to continue to train.
"One of the things we are able to offer here is that young people are going to have the opportunity to grade for their first belt.
"Its a stepping stone and its a great opportunity to prove something to yourself, but you don't have to."
This is a 10 week course funded by Leap, however there are hopes to continue this if further funding allows.
Hannah from Youth Concern says this course is engaging young people that would usually not be connected to their centre:
"While the drop in centre has remained open young people are having to pre-book.
"This significant change to how they access our services meant we had to think about building a new pipeline to build trust so they felt able to ask for help now or in the future.
"The positive thing is that the drop-in centre doesn't have to be restrained by the 4 walls anymore
"We are reaching out to the community through outreach work but also online programmes and when we heard about Safari MMA we were excited to engage with young people in a new way."