Windfall for St Peter's club

YOUNG people from Lurgan are celebrating a Big Lottery Fund windfall from its Big Deal Small Grants Programme.

The Youth Improvement Programme (YIP) in Lurgan received 2,500 towards a youth club for over-12s, teenagers like Katie Headley from the town.

YIP is attached to the St Peter’s Youth Club which Katie has been going to since she was about 10. “When my friends and I were about 12 or 13 we started drifting away from the club because we didn’t think the activities suited us anymore,” explained Katie.

However, she subsequently got involved in helping to organise events for the younger ones and has been taking an active role again at St Peter’s for the last three years.

“We formed a youth committee to look into how best to get teenagers to stay on at the club. Keeping older members is a problem not just at St Peter’s but at most of the youth clubs in Lurgan,” said Katie.

“Because we were young people ourselves on the committee it was easy for us to speak to other teenagers and ask them what the club could do to get them to come back, so this project has been very much driven by the young people

“As a result we’ll be using this funding to bring on board quality coaching in various sports, like soccer, rugby, badminton – generally the types of sports you wouldn’t get to try unless you joined a club,” added the A-level student.