Amelia

"MYZ is a place of opportunity for all young people to use…it has made me who I am today”

Amelia, 17

Amelia came to the club as a junior, there was nothing to do locally and the YZ offered all kinds of activities in the evening and in the holidays. Amelia loved it, there was always something different to do, always new people to meet. She was always an enthusiastic participant and met two of her best friends here.
At primary school things were often challenging for her at schools and home and she one to one support and mentoring support from the team. As she got older and moved into seniors, she says it helped her mature and grow more.
During seniors she completed the young leaders training and was part of MYZ Youth Voice group, where one of her highlights was attending a roundtable consultation event chaired by Andy Burnham on Youth and Knife Crime. She went on to college to study politics, but because of covid she had found it hard to settle down to learn and study and found the pressure too much.
She was for a time mentored by MYZ to help her stay engaged and manage her anxiety which had escalated during the pandemic; she has always felt able to speak quite openly here and has lots of staff members she trusts and can talk to.
Amelia says one conversation at MYZ often leads to another which results in programmes being developed around young people and Amelia joined the newly established Maker Space sessions that aimed to help young people learn the basics of product development and starting your own business. These sessions inspired her to develop an idea to fuse technology, design and cushions and Amelia started to design and build her product and business proposal. Amelia has also recently participated in Snow Camp and has been chosen to be one of only 2 young people to go to the Alps and gain qualifications in skiing and snowboarding instruction.
She still has interests in range of things but unsure what she wants to do and is considering an apprenticeship to reach her aspirations alongside continuing to develop her business idea with the support of the maker space team.