A CREDITON Christmas workshop programme that offers sponsored places for young people entitled to Free School Meals and whose families are in lower income brackets has filled in record time.

Significant Seams, Crediton Town Council Youth Club, and The Turning Tides Project are collaborating to deliver a Festive Feast for teens amidst a gift-making workshop led by artists.

They are now inviting donations to enable Christmas parcels to be distributed to other Crediton young people.

The three organisations imagined the partnership would help increase reach to the most vulnerable families in the area, using their combined relationships, mailing lists, and social media followings.

However, the programme booked 27 people for the 20 originally allocated places before any of the partners announced the new programme.

CALL FOR DONATIONS

Devon County Council Holiday Activity and Food Programme has enabled free spaces for 11-16 year-olds entitled to Free School Meals, and Crediton Town Council has enabled a number of additional spaces at half price for young people whose families are near to, but above the Free School meals eligibility line.

Given the quick response to the Eventbrite booking system going live, the partners conferred about their capacity and increased the booking threshold.

They have also now opened a waiting list for additional places and are requesting financial donations to enable activity and food parcels for more Crediton young people.

Donations can be made via the Eventbrite page at: https://bit.ly/FestiveFunCrediton .

Local residents can also register for the waiting list and follow the organisers from this same link.

The quick filling of spaces is a worrying sign of the local impact of the national cost of living crisis.

A December 2020 national report about “measuring and mitigating child hunger” by the Social Market Foundation found that mid-Devon youth have the seventh highest food insecurity in the country, despite not appearing on the indices of highest need.

The study indicates 23 per cent of mid-Devon young people have food insecurity.

North Devon is placed ninth.

The pandemic response provided particular insight into areas where employment, cost of living and other social and economic factors have high impact - and where social and community support infrastructure may be relatively weak. More widely recognised areas of poverty in Devon did not make the list of 20 local authorities with the highest food insecurity nationally.

In addition to this programme, the new Crediton Youth Centre in Old Landscore School is running regular low cost social events for young people aged 10 and over.

Anyone interested in joining should check the website at: https://www.crediton.gov.uk/Youth-Work for the latest information.