Dave and Kathy’s Residential Blog!!
Below is a blog from two volunteers who supported one of our residential weekends this July.
We both volunteered to help out with the Residential Weekend at Kingswood in July. Kathy had done one before I was a “newbie”.
The weekend was great fun and very rewarding, there were 15 amazing young people and 2 other adult volunteers, the staff at Kingswood organised a full program which everyone enjoyed, many of the young people tried the activities for the first time whilst some who returned having been to a previous Residential managed to conquer their fears and apprehensions this time. It was so wonderful to see their smiles and how proud they were at achieving their goals.
There was also some free time, a very wet water fight (!!), and some very well organized CLAPA activities.
We both enjoyed the week-end immensely, it was great seeing the young people making friends, having fun and meeting others with the same challenges as themselves. They also enjoyed their dorm time away from the adults as well, on the Friday they were still going strong at 2 am but on Saturday, after a full days programme, everyone was asleep by 11!
As Parents ourselves it was so heartwarming to see all these young people just being themselves and happy all weekend. We would highly recommend this to any adult volunteers who have an opportunity to attend a Residential Weekend.
We both felt moved and rewarded by this experience.
Dave and Kath
West Midlands Branch
You can find out more about our residential weekends here!
You can read more about this one in ‘CLAPA in the Middle’, by Claire Evans, our regional co-ordinator for the Central region.
