Thumbs up for Centre by Adam Morgan
(Warrington Guardian)

Young people in Birchwood and the surrounding areas now have a new brilliant Youth Centre in Birchwood. This new centre, which is a new state of the art facility, is open in the evenings for any local youngsters.

This new venue has cost an amazing £290,000 to build and was designed to suit the needs of the local young people. Their old building was unsafe to use and basically falling down around them.

The Youth Centre is one of only two privately run youth centres in Warrington. The money for the centre came from a number of different places with £248,000 coming from the National Lottery and other big names such as the National Trust, Warrington Borough Council and not forgetting Birchwood Council and Lloyds TSB.

The centre gets major help from Birchwood Council and then the Youth Service provides the youth workers.

The building isn't just used for the youth centre, other local groups are welcome to use the centre during the day, such as local Amateur Dramatic companies.

Since its opening a few months ago they have accumulated 97 paid up members and then there are the visitors that attend. The youths are from the surrounding areas such as Oakwood, Locking Stumps, Gorse Covert and Birchwood.

There are brilliant facilities in the building such as a Cyber Café, where you have access to the Internet and games. In the main hall there are a couple of pool and ping-pong tables to play on while listening to brilliant music on the stereo system and also a quiet/TV room. This room has a plaque dedicated to Danny Jackson, a local youth who was tragically killed a few years ago.

When I visited the centre the young people were very happy with the building and facilities, commenting: "Yeah, it's alright and the youth workers are really friendly". They felt that the best parts of the centre were: "The TV room is great" and "Coming and playing on the games and chillin' with your mates".

The teenagers thought the benefits of the centre were that they could build on social skills, it stops them getting bored and that it keeps them out of trouble and off the streets at night.

The new Birchwood Youth Centre is a benefit to the entire community and the young people who attend should be proud of the facilities they have. So if you live in the local area, just pop in and made new friends. You will be made very welcome by both the members of the centre and the staff.