Empowering Communities: Ninth Hub's Grant Allocation Retreat

The communities team took 13 members of the Ninth Hub group to the beautiful South Devon coast for three days and two nights. Our aim was to process this year's final round of Small Grant Fund applications (SGF), build upon existing staff and young people’s relationships, bring people together to provide opportunities for new relationships to flourish and to have fun.

Coming from all corners of Devon the communities team had arranged to bring young people together to rendezvous at The Station. Once we had all congregated at Newton Abbot we had lunch followed by some icebreakers, wrote our code of conduct and played some team building games, before driving on to our final destination at Slapton Sands. Thank you to the amazing staff team at ‘The Station’ for making us feel so welcome!

We arrived at the accommodation at Slapton sands and got settled in, prepped for dinner and enjoyed a group meal. We needed to accommodate some dietary requirements along with some acute anxieties around eating in front of others and the high energy environment of the kitchen filled with people, with a few minor adjustments we were all able to enjoy this time together. As the day came to an end we settled in for the night and at our agreed bed time all the young people went to their rooms and we all had an event free night! The next morning we had planned to jump straight into the Small Grant Fund applications but as the weather was set to deteriorate throughout the day we decided to go for a walk down to the beach before the rain came. We achieved half of this plan as the heavens opened soon after we had arrived on the beach, fortunately it was only a short walk of less than a mile in the rain and we had taken spare waterproofs! A great way to start the day and to blow away the ‘cobwebs’! Once we had arrived back at the accommodation, dried off and with a hot chocolate in hand we split into groups to look at the funding applications - to avoid any potential bias we make sure that the applications are anonymised so the young people are not aware of the project/group name or where it is based.

This group of young people are now well versed in the process of allocating funds and looking at application forms. They treat this process with the professionalism and integrity we can all be proud of - they ask probing questions and openly debate the pros and cons of the application before collectively agreeing the decision. We have been doing this now for many years and this group has really impressed us with their professionalism, the seriousness in which they went about this taks and the detail they were able to provide to justify their decisions both when awarding grants or rejecting them. Needless to say we were all very proud of this group and the way they conducted themselves.

Our final meal was enjoyed along with some halloween themed ‘silly games’ and then the young people settled into the evening with a film, some pool and ending with karaoke. A great way to end a productive day!

In the morning we needed to be up early as we had to vacate the centre by 10am which meant we all needed to have breakfast, pack away our gran and tidy the centre - we nailed it and were all in the minibuses by 10 - Great job all!

This residential is the culmination of all the hard work young people of the ninth hub have put in over the last few months and years, it is not used as a ‘carrot’ to encourage new members to sign up to the project but more as a thank you for all their effort. The event was part funded by a grant from Waitrose plus the young people contributed £10 towards food costs meaning that the whole event was delivered at minimal costs to our organisation.

A great event, enjoyed by all and the community youth work sector benefited by the ninth hub awarding over £33k in grants - this will have such a positive impact on young people and their communities across Devon.

The Communities Team

October 2023