By Brandon Freeman, Community Organiser
After previously successful ‘themed’ parties at Henley Community Centre, a Christmas get-together was arranged as a means to engage young people, families and the older generation.
The event offered a perfect opportunity for people to have fun in their local community centre and celebrate Christmas together.
The party included Santa, who delivered presents to the children in attendance, hot drinks, sweet treats, Children’s entertainer Mister Twister, arts and crafts and of course everyone’s favourite Christmas songs.
As well as volunteers, the event involved a lot of partners and opened up opportunities to collaborate in the future, this included a chance to work with Age UK Rotherham, Councillor and resident Eve Rose-Keenan, local PSCOs and the Early Help team. The contributions from partners helped make the event the success that it was: Early Help brought along the Children’s entertainer, Councillor Eve invited Santa and also provided the presents for the Children, Age UK Rotherham gave a hand with refreshments, Henley TARA provided the music and Rotherham Federation provided the food, organisation and co-ordination of the event.
Additionally, the event had good attendance with 50 people attending of varying ages – everyone I spoke to was positive about the event and said they would like to see more in their local area.
The event was developed and delivered predominantly by Rotherham Federation in an aim to get volunteers interested and show local residents what sort of events are possible when people pull together.
I hope to speak to residents and set up an events group which would be a natural offshoot of the current TARA, this could potenentially be done digitally over social media in order to give local families and volunteers a say and a chance to run similar events in their local community centre.
