Young people in East Manchester have taken a keen interest in the community this summer due to a new rewarding scheme.

Children have helped elderly and other people in their communities and for this they received points which when added up earned them either a day trip go-karting, a day in Blackpool, a trip to the cinema, football tickets for Manchester City, or bowling.

The scheme, called Dreamscheme, was launched two summers ago in Beswick by Northern Counties Housing Association to encourage children and young people to get involved in the community.

Under the guidance of NCHA and the local residents associations, the children took part in activities such as gardening, planting out communal areas, baking cakes for older people, packing bags at the local supermarket, delivering groceries and washing cars.

Sheila Duffy, of Charlesworth Residents Association in Beswick, said that the scheme gave the children something positive to do during the summer.  She also said that it gave the children a sense of being valued and it helped them to mix with others of different ages and to help create a better understanding between the generations.

Funding for the initiative came from NCHA and additional money came from Joint Openshaw Group, East Manchester Holiday Programme.

The final event of the summer involved the young people helping customers Asda in Clayton to pack their groceries. Shoppers were asked to make a donation to charity and between them the 'dreamschemers' earned £135 for the NSPCC. Ken Irving, NCHA's Chief Executive thought this was such a good effort that he agreed to double the donation and a cheque for £270 was recently passed to NSPCC, rounding off the summer's activities on a real high.

Both and staff and residents alike are looking forward to their next event making Christmas cakes and decorations for a local sale to be held at Charlesworth Court in December.

The scheme has proved to be very successful and now some of the older children are playing an active part in the running of it, hopefully making next year even better.


The original document is available in PDF format for downloading (363k). Advertiser Dreamscheme September 2004

The Adobe Acrobat Reader can be freely downloaded from http://www.adobe.co.uk/

Viewers with visual difficulties may find it useful to investigate services provided to improve the accessibility of Acrobat documents from http://access.adobe.com/