The TQ6 Community Partnership is supporting the Lionheart Challenge community legacy project in Dartmouth and Townstal. It’s for young people to show their spark. Sergeant Neil Powers explained what Lionheart is all about and what it aims to achieve.
Business and enterprise
Lionheart is in essence a business and enterprise challenge which encourages the participants to consider issues within their communities such as homelessness, unemployment, single parents etc. Once these issues have been discussed and researched, the participants create a Community Legacy Project which they are encouraged and supported in setting up within their home town.
Learning about their communities
The young people taking part volunteer for roles as part of the challenge such as marketing, researching, scribe, spokesperson etc in order to develop and push themselves forward. They learn a great deal about citizenship and what they can do to change, for the better, the communities they live in. The young people lean to understand how the area they live in works, what the socio-economic problems are and how they can assist in improving it. What better way to learn what the community needs, then asking members of that community!
Pride
I have worked with the challenge a number of times. There have been some real successes for instance a knife amnesty bin being located in an area associated with violence between young people. The young people have, as part of the challenge, researched the issue, come up with crime stats and information about victims and perpetrators, have designed a business case and then acted on that business case to raise funds to purchase the amnesty bin and link in with local councils to secure planning and permission for the bin to be located. The young people see their school named on the bin as well as the sponsors and supplier and so take pride in what they have achieved.
We hope it will be a regular occurrence in the town. This is subject to funding and further input from the school and other sponsors. The aim is to encourage other schools to take part to allow a ‘Grand Final’ at some point in the future.
Supported by the TQ6 Community Patnership, the Lionheart Challenge will take place in Townstal and Dartmouth in March, 2024