Youth Program

QPCO believes that inspiring and supporting young people to become tomorrow’s leaders is core to our aim of capacity building. We work to support young people in some of the most deprived wards of Bedford to identify and address issues they care about and affect them in their own communities.
QPCO is currently running a social action project at Bedford Academy funded by BBC children in needs!

Aims of the project:

support young people to make changes in their area, in your school or community.
Help young people to creatively explore and tackle issues such as cyber-bullying, climate change, mental health, isolation, hunger…etc.

The young people explored different topics and they decided that they wanted to ‘Tackle loneliness’. The group called themselves ‘BASTLIE ‘(Bedford Academy Students Tackling Loneliness In Everyone). They have met a range of professionals voluntary and statutory to explain to them what does the work involves and what they could do to help. They are hoping to be delivering activities in the Kingsbrook & Caudwell area. They hope to present their projects to a range of professionals, organisations and schools to recruit more young people to join their scheme. This program also offer volunteering and leadership opportunity.

In July 2023, the core group of BASTLIE went to visit Southway Residential home. They took part in Ingrid’s morning session in delivering activities with the residents. We had exercises with dancing and singing along to old favorites, games of skittles and parachute! It was a real opener for the group and reinforce the idea of carrying with the project. The all group also attended the Community Drop-In session organised by Terry Hayden East-Bedford Social-Prescriber. They brought board games, food and their smiles to the event. They loved speaking to Phil from Bedford Community Policing Team. They also had the opportunity to speak to other charities.

BASTLIE Award Ceremony

They had their award ceremony on Wednesday 12th July 2023 at the Swan hotel. Thank you for the parents and guardians who could make it. It was a way of recognising the work of the young people for the past year. We were delighted to have Deputy Lieutenant Dr Elisabeth Slack Bedfordshire Lieutenancy with us!

‘I will’ project 2021

In 2021, QPCO ran a social action youth project. We were just coming out of the 4th Covid-19 pandemic lockdown and Mental Health was the topic the young people involved with the project chose. They wanted to send a message to other young people about wellbeing during the pandemic and they created a song called ‘smile’ which was recorded by Luma sounds.

Queen’s Park young ambassadors programme creates a ‘smile’ with new song