WOODSTOCK YOUTH WORK TRUST
Summer 2022 – Summer 2023
Activities Report
TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE BACKGROUND ..................................................... 2 AN INTRODUCTION .................................................... 3 WORK IN THE CHURCH ............................................... 4
WORK IN THE COMMUNITY ........................................ 7
WORK IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL ........................... 9
WORK IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL.............................. 13
WHAT’S NEXT? ......................................................... 16
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THE BACKGROUND
Woodstock Youth Work Trust (WYWT) was established in 2016 after two years of work bringing it all together. The vision of the Trust is to unite and equip the churches in Woodstock to carry out youth work, with a discipleship focus, in the community, and through the local schools. Our mission statement is:
"To help teenagers in Woodstock realise their identity in Christ through discipleship and mission, and engage them as disciple-makers”
We seek to carry out this mission in a variety of ways and this report is a collation of all the different ways that we seek to implement it, the impact it is having, and the ways we see it expanding in the near future.
We have now had seven years of working towards these goals, and so have collated an outline of the activities specifically of the last year, but also with a picture of what we hope to achieve going forward.
AN INTRODUCTION
Over the last year, we have seen a lot of exciting things start to happen because of the work of the trust. We have re-established regular points of connection with local churches and become increasingly involved with local community groups. Also we have strengthened the role of chaplaincy within the local Secondary School and launched a new model for chaplaincy in the local Primary School.
Each of these areas represents a clear area of vision and focus for WYWT, and the following report has been categorised into the following headings:
1. Work in the Church
2. Work in the Community
3. Work in the Secondary School
4. Work in the Primary School
Looking at what we do in these categories helps to highlight both the work we have been focusing on developing, as well as the work needed to further develop the work.
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WORK IN THE CHURCH
A core focus of the work of WYWT is supporting the work of the churches, and working together with them to provide for the young people they have in their congregations. This includes the work of the trust that is distinctly Christian, even if that does not necessarily take place within a church building.
CHURCH ATTENDANCE
Since the Trust is partnering with several of the local churches, one thing we try to do is make sure we are present at each of the churches.
It has been really encouraging for this to happen more regularly this year, and to pick up that regular contact with the local churches. We have particularly enjoyed the amount of support there is for all the work of WYWT from local Christians. Being able to touch base with them in this way has enabled them to feel more aware of and a part of the work that is happening, and allowed us to feel more supported and championed by the local Christian community.
As well as attending regular services, there have also been additional Church events, services, and times we have been invited to join in with. This has included opportunities to lead services in each of the churches and share, as well as God’s word, what WYWT are doing.
Spending time with the people in each church has also given space for them to approach us and share their vision for youth work and support on new initiatives they are trying to develop as a congregation. This has been particularly exciting, as it shows the vision for youth work in Woodstock is growing, and not just being carried by the Trust. This is vital for real multiplication to occur.
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CHURCHES TOGETHER
One of the things we are involved with is the Churches Together in Woodstock and Bladon. This has meant the work the Trust is doing is getting more exposure, as well as opening other opportunities within the Christian community of Woodstock to us.
As well as being given opportunities to speak at different ecumenical events, being involved with Churches Together has allowed us to hear more about what is happening in Woodstock, and to have a voice in shaping how the churches are a part of this. Since taking a more active part in Churches Together and sharing what we are doing with them more regularly, we have also seen the interest and understanding of who we are and what we do increase amongst the people involved.
DIOCESE OF OXFORD
The extent of the WYWT relationship with the Anglican church and CofE schools means we have been able to establish a strong working relationship with the local Diocese. This has resulted in further ministry training, equipping, and support, as well as invitation to join a network of other chaplains across the Diocese to connect with and learn from.
These links are helpful as we continue to network and establish new connections with other youth ministries. Increasingly, it has becoming more difficult to gather large groups of Christian young people for activities and events. By being connected to other nearby ministries, we have opportunities to partner with them to achieve these goals more effectively.
PRAYER UPDATES
Prayer is at the very heart of all that we do. Since before WYWT formally existed, we have had a team of committed Christians, who are praying for the work that we are doing, and the young people that we are connecting with.
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Every month, we send out a newsletter to over 50 people who are reading the stories of what has been happening, seeing the specific events and activities that are taking place, and praying specific prayers to support the work and young people.
We genuinely believe it is this prayer that creates a bedrock for everything that we do, and hope to continue to grow the team that is supporting the work in this way.
TRIPLET
Triplet is a small discipleship group that meets weekly to discuss life, faith, and everything in between. It is a space to intentionally meet in groups of 2- 4 for discipleship, where the young people are encouraged in their faith, and challenged towards growth in their lives and leadership.
These triplets are established around need, so when we have young people who are ready for this stage in their faith journey, we invite them into a triplet.
These regular exploratory meetings are most impactful thing we do with young people, and is what makes the biggest difference in their own lives and faith. The hope is this time equips them to live their lives faithfully.
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WORK IN THE COMMUNITY
A key part of the vision of WYWT is to not create spaces and expect young people to come, but rather to be actively present in the places that young people are already spending their time. With this in mind, there are a few existing groups in the community we support where WYWT can continue to support our young people.
GORDO E.S.U
Gordo E.S.U is a local Explorer Scout Unit based in Kidlington. Being involved with it over the last few years has been really beneficial to the work of the Trust.
Involvement with the Scouts Association means they provide access to many free training opportunities, allowing our youth worker to further his leadership skills, get a First Aid qualification, and even pay to get a minibus license, all of which benefit us in our continued work.
As well as this, it is another opportunity to engage with local young people, get to know them, and have lots of opportunities during hikes, on a Monday night, and around a camp fire to talk about all things big and small. This has also led to good conversations about faith, with some young people going on to explore their faith, and in some cases baptism, as a result of these conversations.
WOODSTOCK YOUTH CLUB
Woodstock Youth Club is the local youth club that is run weekly and has been around for many years. As this is a key part of the community in Woodstock, it was felt that WYWT should, as part of its remit, support what already exists for the young people in Woodstock.
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Woodstock Youth Club have a good knowledge of who we are and the work we are doing and are very supportive of it. Being involved with the weekly drop-in that is held there, has been helpful in terms of being able to come alongside different young people within the community, as well as support the work the youth club is doing.
This year, we have seen an increase in attendance at the youth club during the weekly drop-in. It’s been really encouraging to see more young people starting to come regularly, and to start getting to know them through this time. This work has also fitted nicely with the work in the Primary School, which a lot of the young people who come to the youth club attend.
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WORK IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL
A significant focus of our time and energy over the last few years has been in establishing a Chaplaincy programme at the local Secondary School, the Marlborough CofE School. Over the last three years, the work of WYWT has been split between the chaplaincy work in the Marlborough, and the rest of the work happening in the local churches, and community.
Below are the groups, events, and programmes we have been able to deliver at the Marlborough.
ASSEMBLIES
As part of the Chaplaincy role, we have been able to deliver several assemblies to the school body. These assemblies, delivered to multiple year groups, have struck the balance between being distinctly Christian, whilst still remaining accessible for the wide audience that attend them.
A highlight of these assemblies is always inviting volunteers to the front to engage with a challenge in illustrating the theme of the assembly.
CHARITY
This year we have been able to support the school in their Charity week. In particular, this involved gathering and delivering boxes of food to donate to the food bank and resources to the local baby bank.
As well as providing contact with the local food bank, we supported the school by gathering all the donations that staff and students had made over the week with the help of the charity volunteers made up of year 9 students. Then, along with some volunteers from the 6[th] form, we delivered these
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donations to the food and baby banks. This ended up being a really impactful event for the school, the food and baby banks, and the students who helped.
We are hoping to progress these initiatives in school and make them longer term. The idea would be that we make food bank donations a regular activity of the school.
FAITH IN THE COMMUNITY
The Marlborough School runs a Wednesday afternoon elective programme, and as part of this, over the course of the year, all year 7 students engage with an elective called ‘Faith in the Community’. During this time they will explore the contexts of different faiths, and what that looks like in their communities.
Supporting this has enabled us to come alongside every single year 7 student, and help share what it looks like to be Christian. This has included taking them to the local churches, leading sessions about what Baptism looks like, and most excitingly, creating spaces and opportunites for them to engage with prayer and reflection.
This has been such a great opportunity, and really enables us to get to know all the students starting at Marlborough. We have been blown away by the relational impact it has had with the year group as whole. The year 7 students now consistently view the chaplaincy in school as a place they can come to if they need a bit of extra help or support.
PASTORAL PRESENCE
One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned through the chaplaincy role so far is the importance of being available: in order to meet young people where they are at; you need to be where they are at.
In light of this, we have made sure that we are available at social times throughout the day, either on the playground, or open for drop-ins. This has allowed us to meet a greater number of the students than if we remained based solely in the Chaplaincy Space.
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Having this space to meet and get to know students who would not otherwise engage with the chaplaincy provision, particularly in a neutral space, has really created opportunities to come alongside more pupils in a variety of different ways.
PASTORAL SUPPORT & MENTORING
Over the course of the year, we have been able to meet regularly with various students in the school for mentoring. These are students where relationships have been formed over the year, and who have been identified by the pastoral team as needing more positive attention from staff.
Across a fortnight, we meet with students who are a scheduled session for a variety of different reasons, as well as being available for any students who require that level of support more responsively.
This mentoring is responsive to the needs of the individual, and as such, we have been able to support a number of different students with a wide range of issues going on in their lives.
PRAYER SPACE
At the end of the academic year, we run the annual, week-long prayer space at Marborough.
This is always an incredible week, where we see the local churches come in to support lessons for every year 7, 8, & 9 class to get hands on experience with prayer and reflection. It is a lot of work to create the immersive experience that the students get, but it is incredibly rewarding to see how powerfully moved by and engaged with prayer the students are.
It is particularly moving as it feels like a core of our values, to be able to be a link between the local churches enabling prayer to happen within the school.
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RETOLD
We have continued to meet regularly with our Friday lunchtime faithexploration group. Over the last year, we have been looking at the stories of different people who knew God and the difference it made in their lives, as well as a series of talks introducing them to who Jesus was, and what it was He did that made Him special.
Over the year, the size of the group has fluctuated, with as few as 5 people at points, but up to a group of about 20. Most weeks we are joined by about 12 students. The discussions do not always stay “on topic”, but they are always lively, engaging, and thought-provoking.
STAFF PRAYER
One of the ways we’ve explored chaplaincy for the staff as well as the students is to offer a weekly time of prayer for the staff.
This time of fellowship and prayer is one that that has been immensely appreciated by those who attend it. While there has not been a huge take up, the response from those that do join show how worthwhile this time has become.
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WORK IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL
One of the things we are most excited about from the last year is the expansion of the chaplaincy work into the local Primary School. We have been having on-going conversations with the headteacher there for over a year about what this provision could look like, and as of April this year, we are going into the school once a week for an afternoon chaplaincy provision.
While this age group is not the primary target demographic of the work of Woodstock Youth Work Trust, it has been incredibly refreshing to be occasionally working with this younger age group.
Already, we have seen the benefit that working in the school has on these relationships when the same young people attend other groups (such as the local youth club), or as they come up to Secondary School. It has been an incredible way to continue to build bridges between the church, the schools, and the community, and to help connect young people into these different areas through regular contact and relationship.
COLLECTIVE WORSHIP
One of the ways we have been delivering this chaplaincy provision at the Primary School, is through their weekly faith-based assembly ‘Collective Worship’. Each week when we go in for the afternoon of chaplaincy, it culminates in the whole school gathering to hear a message about who God is, what that means for their life, and a space to reflect on this message.
These messages are usually delivered in a way that is both accessible and engaging (sometimes even fun), but without being patronising. It has been difficult to strike a balance between addressing where the oldest in the room are, and where the youngest in the room are, but this tension has made it all the more satisfying when a good balance has been found.
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PASTORAL PRESENCE
Another part of the provision in the Primary School, is through having pastoral presence on the playground during the lunchtime we are in for. This means while the students are out on the playground and field during lunch, so are we. This gives space for them to start to see us as accessible, and to come and talk to us, ask questions, or share thoughts they have had based around what we have spoken to them about during the prayer space and collective worship times.
It is inspirational to see how enthusiastic the students have been about coming up and talking to us during this time. Often, this takes the form of them asking to be the one to light the candle, or trying to find out what the “Mystery Item” of the week is as part of the collective worship. Ultimately, however, wherever the conversation starts, and wherever it leads to, it has been encouraging to see how interested the students are in furthering those points of contact we have with them.
PRAYER SPACE
The most significant element of the chaplaincy provision at the Primary School is the running of a weekly Prayer Space. Each week, we run sessions for 15 students (3 groups of 5 for 30 minutes each), who come into the school Prayer Space, and get to take part in several activities geared towards engaging them in prayer and reflection.
It is really encouraging to spend time creating space for so many young people to try and experience prayer; some for the first time ever. Consistently, coming out of the time, the feedback we we have received is the students feel calm, happy, and relaxed, and wished that they were able to do it more frequently.
With the current set-up, we are able to get through 2 year groups over a half term, meaning over the course of a year, every year 1-6 student will get two opportunities to visit the space in this manner.
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TRANSITION
Due to the nature of the work both in the Secondary, and Primary schools, we have been able to do targeted work with the year 6’s at the Primary School around their transition to Marlborough.
This has really helped them to feel more prepared, as they get ready to stepup to Secondary School, and it also means that they have had an opportunity to start to get to know someone who works pastorally at Marlborough before they even get there. The expectation is this work will lay the relational groundwork which can be built on during their time at Marlborough.
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WHAT’S NEXT?
As the opportunities within and around Woodstock continue to grow and expand, the hope is that so too, will the work. We really believe there are some big things in Woodstock and Oxfordshire that God is doing, and we long to keep being a part of it. Working towards this is on-going, which makes it a bit hard to know precisely the things that we will be working towards in the future beyond the growth that is already planned and in the pipeline. There are some pieces, however, that we hope will be incorporated as the vision takes shape.
BIGGER TEAM
In order for the growth to be sustainable, we need to look at the team that we have supporting it. We have recently recruited a new volunteer for WYWT, whose sole focus will be around helping our fundraising efforts. This will help to take pressure off the trustees, and in particular the Treasurer, and generate other sources of income for the Trust. We have also secured funding for an additional, part-time worker, which will allow us to expand what we are doing and explore new avenues of ministry.
EXTRACURRICULARS DIRECTIVE
Since emerging out of COVID, a lot of young people dropped attendance at groups they were formerly involved with, and are experiencing a social deprivation as a result.
Therefore one of the initiatives we are looking into, is to create a directive of all the youth groups, teams, clubs, and gatherings that are available in the local area. This can then be used connect young people with activities and groups that they are passionate about, and contribute to their well-being and mental health.
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PRIMARY SCHOOLS
As we have now launched a successful model of chaplaincy in Woodstock Primary, the next stage will be to explore how we can multiply that model into other local primary schools. The hope is that we can have a similar model of chaplaincy in the majority of the feeder schools for the Marlborough
There are opportunities within a lot of these schools, as a number of them are CofE schools.
YOUTH CAFÉ
Another initiative that we are interested in exploring, is a weekly drop-in youth café. The vision for this would be to create a space in the community that once a week could be used as a drop-in for young people to come and hang out, have a drink and a snack, play games, socialise, do homework, or just otherwise relax. Ideally, this would be hosted in the Youth Club as a neutral environment.
YOUTH LEADERS
The local Anglican Church is looking at growing their provision for children and young people. Initially, this is taking the form of a new toddler group, but the hope is this will rejuvenate their youth choir, and potentially lead into a holiday club. If this were to take off, it would create space for us to bring young people in to these spaces as leaders, and give them opportunities to grow in their faith as they serve others.
This could also lead onto taking them on further leadership and missional experiences, such as mission trips, or to Christian youth festivals.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Trust suffered a heavy blow when its Chairperson – Christopher Wallworth - sadly passed away in September last Year. Christoper was with WYWT from the start as a Trustee but took over from the founder Chairperson – Wendy Wilkinson – when Wendy relocated to Bicester in November 2019. We are very grateful to Chris for the enthusiasm and legal skills he brought to us. Needless to say he is very much missed.
Another heavy blow the Trust experienced was losing Ruth Archer to Scotland. Ruth was also a founder member and WYWT Secretary. Ruth kept everyone and everything in order. She also is badly missed. The Trustees extend a welcome to Ruth’s replacement – Sarah Williams – and wish her well.
The Trustees of Woodstock Youth Work Trust continue to be humbled and thankful for the continued support and faithfulness of our individual Supporters, be this in prayer, financial contributions, or both. It is extremely encouraging to us and without it we would not be able to continue. Thankyou so much to every one of you.
The Trustees extend their gratitude to local Woodstock Church congregations for their prayers and financial help. Ecumenical support is a wonderful thing and WYWT is an example of what this can achieve.
Thankyou to the independent charities who have contributed to financing the cost of WYWT. These are:
The Benefact Trust Charlton on Otmoor Living Legacy Fund Pye Foundation Trust Laing Family Trusts Garfield Weston Foundation
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CHARITY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND AND WALES Independent examiner's report on the accounts Secllon A Independent Examiner's Report Report to the trustee31 members of Woodstock Youth Work Trust On accounts for the year ended 3181 May 2023 Charity no lif any} 1167999 Set out on pages attached I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the above charity ("the Trust") for the year ended Responsibilities and As the Gharily trustees of the Trust, you are responsible for the preparation basis of report of the accounts in accordan with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 1"the Act") I report in respect of my examination of the Trust's account5 carried oul under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in carrying oul my examination, I have followed the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145151{b) of the Act. I have completed my examination. I confirm that no material matters have come lo my attention in connection with the examination which gives me cause to believe that in, any material re5pecl'. accounting records were not kept in accordance with section 130 of the Act or the accounts do not accord with the accounting records Independent examiner's statement have no COnrnS and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention Should be drawn in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached. Signed: Date: 11-07- IJ* Name: ARCOX Relevant professional qualification{s} or body (if any): F.C.C.A Address: 35 Manor Road Bladon Woodstock, Oxon Se¢tion B Disclosure Only complete if the examiner needs to highlight mallers of concern (see CC32, Independent examination of charity accounts.. directions and guidance for examiners}. IER October 2018
CHARITY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND ANO WALES Roceipts and payments accounts CC16a For the perlod from 0110612022 To 3110512023 Section A Receipts and paymenls Unrestricted fund8 to the nearest Restricted Endowment funds fund8 to the noarvst to the nearost to the ngarest Totsl furid5 Last year to the nearest £ A1 Recei Donations Gift aid 8ank Interest t8 21 21 11 ross Income or AR) 16.227 16,227 26,031 A2 Asset and investment 8ales,18ee table). Total receipts A3Pa Sala Pension roll adminislralion Trainin ort materi81 & hos Bank char es Insurance Sund ex enses Professional services & ments 21,495 1,059 185 133 486 21,495 1,059 185 133 486 18,166 877 178 35 330 96 353 85 219 66 219 66 737 737 405 Sub total A4 Asset and investment urchases see table Sub total Total payments 24,3 Net ofrecelpts/{paymentsJ AS Transf•r8 b8tw•en funds A6 Cash funds la8t year end Cash funds this year end 1110712023
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