“Red Rhino Resilience” is youth work project coupled with the disaplines of Martial art

Description

“Red Rhino Resilience” is a new SEI award winning six week youth development project that combines tried an tested pro-social youth work activities coupled with the disaplines of traditional martial arts that works with and targets typically hard to reach young people from socio- economic disadvantaged area’s.

The aim of the project is to positively promote better physical, mental and behaivoural outcomes and was born out of the overwhelming demand for social services in a post covid world. Each class/week has a “theme” in which we discuss an tackle social problems eg: Sterotyping, Diversity, Knife crime, effects of Drugs & Alcohol to name a few and through the sport of kickboxing and useing tries and tested youth work practices, explore and overcome these topics/challenges

Their experience an levels of happiness, school retention, outlook an more, are measured at the beginning and the end of the project

Once a young person has completed the course they are then trained an asked if they would like to come back and act as a mentor to new recruits. This means that the project keeps growing and its impact is ever growing.
To date the project has seen a couple of hundred students since its inception and worked with many, many youth work organisations Eg Tusla, Jigsaw, SoSad

The project has gone from strength to strength since its beginning an amazingly, is reaching an positively changing the life path of so many young people all over South Dublin

Aim of Initiative

The aim of the project is postively reach and change the life path of young people who may be experience any number of physical, mental or emotional challenges in South Dublin and the wider country

Who is it aimed at

Right now the initiative is aimed at young people aged 6yrs up to 17yrs from all different cultures and back rounds but due to its success to date and demand, we hope to expand the project to adults as it continues ro grow

3 Steps critical to success

1. Altough all the youth work agencies do a fantastic job, we feel what made us able to engage these hard to reach young people was the alore and riseing popularity Martial arts. So step one was to pilot workshops in house, with the local youth organisations
2. Step two was put pen to paper drawing on our experience of what worked well,
   While completeing all available social care training and apply for small grants that would allow us to deliver our project
3. Develop a central administritive system that would help us manage the influx in demand of calls an emails for the project eg: Website, learning materials, delivery packDevelop a “Leadership” programme for the young people who completed the six weeks an sought to come back as a mentor to exercise and help the young people who are just starting as the project continued to grow

3 Challenges in Planning / Delivery

1. Initially, combining the Martial arts exercise with the problem we were trying to solve was a creative challenge, but having worked with hundreds of kids at this stage an collaborateing with many agencies, we have honed and combined both sport and social care to optimise the initiatives impact in a fun an friendly way
2. Transport and equipmentSometimes transport, in which an organisation may wish us to run a workshop at their venue can be difficult

   Equipment, giving the nature of our sport, most of the equipment we use is perishable after enough use, this means we do need some funding from time to time in order to keep the project running

3. At the moment, expansion due to the demand for the project is oir biggest challenge, presently our HQ in perfect for what we can manage but as the initiave continues to grow, it will mean we will need to seek a bigger venue at some point in the near future

3 Outcomes / Benefits

1. A massive reduction in anti-social behaivour, better emotional regulation, positive school retention rates, increased confidence, increased happiness, increased fitness levels, increased mental strenght, increased coordination and team work
2. Positive physical, mental and emotional strenght as well as becoming leaders in their communities. Social Entrepenurs Ireland award winning training and credibility
3. An over demand for our service