The Whitehaven Harbour Youth Project (WHYP) provides positive activities for young people, offers a versatile high-quality premises, and delivers outdoor and adventure education programs. Our mission statement is “We are a local charitable organisation, dedicated to giving young people opportunities to develop their potential, to understand themselves and others, and to have a good time. We achieve that by delivering high quality, evidence-based youth work, in our town centre facility and through outdoor adventure.”
We engage young people locally as well as those outside Copeland, as well as building up a profile of working with other external agencies to meet our mission statement, either as partners in delivery or buy in our services. Established in 1996, we moved to our new youth facility in May 2008. This includes a sports hall with custom-built climbing/bouldering walls, 5-a-side football pitch, youth space, training rooms and more. We operate a weekly youth centre-based program throughout the year, enhanced by extra off-site activities at weekends and during school holidays. We provide opportunities for accreditation through the National Indoor Climbing Award Scheme (NICAS), the Duke of Edinburgh Award (DofE), Youth Achievement Award, ASDAN and more. Our monitoring and evaluation work has shown us that we offer life changing experiences for many of our beneficiaries in this isolated and deprived part of West Cumbria. Over the years we have built up a range of exciting opportunities for young people to experience opportunities beyond their doorstep. These have included such experiences as:
• City visits – Edinburgh, Newcastle, Leeds and more, all through Youth Development fund – exploring places
some young people haven’t been before.
• Sailing residential aboard a 70ft Yacht and being part of the crew.
• Residential experiences.
• Volunteering opportunities to develop key skills for later life.
….and much, much more. All activities are wholly inclusive and we subsidise costs through grants or fundraising wherever possible. We recruit for these activities through our Youth Group, and through local advertising. During the day we rent part or all of our premises to other organisations and our diary is full for the coming year accommodating both adult and youth-focused groups. Our Adventurous Activities Licence allows us to generate income from the delivery of outdoor activities. Our main customers are local schools, colleges, youth groups and uniformed organisations. Our premises rental and outdoor activity delivery work allowed us to generate approximately 40-45% of our yearly total income each year. The remaining income came from grants and donations. Our accessible town centre location is vital to our success as it increases opportunities for sustained work with young people.
