The Day Our Wishes Were Granted!
At the last County grants meeting, Calderdale were informed that we could make a plea to a local committee called the Youth Opportunities Fund (YOF) to enable us to gain a substantial amount of money towards an activity that would benefit our club. All we needed was two ‘volunteers’ between the ages of 13 and 19 to help fill in the paperwork. Those ‘volunteers’ happened to be myself and Jon Midgley, (along with help from Dave Hamer and Faye Clayton!).
As a group we decided that a residential trip would be a fun and worthwhile benefit to all the members within our club, after careful thought, we decided to research heading off to the Lake District, settling on Keswick to be exact, hopefully with Vivid Events, an outdoor adventure and activity centre.
It wasn’t going to be easy, taming the dragons on the YOF panel, so we set about filling in the application form, crossing our fingers and hoping that our application would be accepted. Then a letter came through the post – hey presto! Guess what? They asked us to come and talk to the panel in person – they must’ve thought that young people running such a large organisation was too good to be true. So then, there was the panic of organising what we were going to say but being stuck for words. Looking like yokels may have been the stereotype the committee were expecting, but it wasn’t what we wanted to portray!
We gathered together a representative team, including Dave Hamer, Jon Midgley, myself, Fiona and Robert Gibbon, Frankie Lumb, Nathan Aldridge and Edward Fairbank (Edward and Nathan were instructed to look just like themselves – nice hoodie Edward!).
So came doomsday, Wednesday 7th March, our chance to impress the judges and prove our worth by returning to the club, hopefully with £5,250 worth of winnings. On entering the boardroom, we were faced with the iron glares from about ten other 13 to 19 year olds, obviously expecting a load of pitchfork-bearing, straw-chewing, dungaree-wearing, well… farmers!
We all took our turn to enlighten the panel on our roles within the club besides our exploits as Young Farmers and the joys of being involved in such an organisation. Using ten 26 magazines, past handbooks and our club programs from the past 6 months to illustrate what we are about.
We left the room ten minutes later with the information that we would be contacted the day after with the outcome. Sure enough my phone rang on Thursday evening, with congratulations as the committee had selected us to be awarded the whole £5,250 for our trip - RESULT!!!
Hannah Noble