This year our CREWY team has played a crucial role in helping young people in our Inside Out houses cope with community lockdowns.
CREWY, or ‘Creating Real Experiences With Youth’, was established before the pandemic and emerged as a cool initiative of our youth workers to provide fun excursions and activities for young people that they would otherwise be unable to access.
This included local outings as well as trips further afield to places such as Melbourne Zoo and Phillip Island – milestones in these young people’s lives that gave them opportunities to build their confidence and create positive, shared memories.
When the pandemic emerged, the CREWY team worked together to come up with a rolling series of creative, often hilarious challenges and competitions to keep the young people and live-in mentors in our homes engaged and positive. It worked! The winner of each fortnightly challenge was awarded a minor prize (such as Uber Eats for two) along with earning points that contributed to the overall competition.
The CREWY team recently moved into the second round of fortnightly challenges. So far these have included:
- Cupcake challenge
- Facemask decoration challenge
- Graffiti Train Art challenge (decorating a cardboard model of a train)
- Digital Story challenge
In coming weeks, the young people will also have a crack at:
- Clay Sculpture challenge
- Spoken word/rap challenge
The winner of the overall second round will receive a voucher for Culture Kings OR a BMX. Second place gets a Rebel Sport OR Sephora voucher. Third place gets a JB Hi-Fi OR Footlocker voucher.
The first round of challenges was a great success, with the overall winner receiving a clothing gift voucher, and second and third places vouchers as well. The challenges included:
- Bake Off challenge (most creative cake)
- Easter Egg Eating challenge (most creative way of eating/filming the eggs being eaten)
- Graffiti challenge (create a piece of graffiti-style artwork)
- Spoken Word/Rap challenge
- Garden Ornament challenge (create a garden ornament from upcycled items around the home)
- Awareness Challenge (Reflecting on Black Lives Matter by listening to relevant songs and expressing their thoughts through art)
- Tie Dye challenge
It is heartening to see the enthusiasm young people engaged in our CREWY competitions show week in week out during what has been one of our toughest years on record. It’s testament to their resilience and positivity that they’ve done so well during the pandemic. They are champions! It goes without saying that we are so grateful to the CREWY team for creating these fun and unique activities for our young people, illustrating just how committed they are to keep spirits up, build confidence and shine a light into their lives when everything can feel pretty dark. It makes a difference.
We’ll keep you updated about the challenges as the young people create their entries. It would be great if you could join in the fun from home and send in photos of your responses to the different challenges. You can send them via our Facebook page.
Find out more about Inside Out.
Support our Hope at Home project to bring joy to a young person’s life and home in these difficult days. Find out more here.
