Whitehaven Harbour Youth Project

General information

The Whitehaven Harbour Youth Project (WHYP) provides positive activities for young people, offers a versatile high-quality premises, and delivers outdoor and adventure education programs. Over 1300 young people are involved in WHYP each year and 20 or more local organisations are either partners in delivery or buy in our services. We have been operating in Whitehaven for 18 years.

Our mission statement is; ‘To give young people the opportunity to develop their potential, to understand themselves and others, to enjoy life and contribute positively to the world.'

We operate a weekly youth centre based program throughout the year, enhanced by extra off site activities at weekends and during school holidays.

Recent examples of activities that formed part of the weekly program include Dance Cumbria Boys Breakdancing Master Class, North Country Leisure Football Mash-Up, Cumbria Drug and Alcohol Advisory Service workshops, Whitehaven Youth Forum consultation, Encaustic Art Night, and Archery Taster Sessions. Throughout the year we also offer ‘one-off’ activities in place of a regular session – for example ‘Girls Night’ cinema trip, or ‘Friday Night Project’ Carlisle Skate Park trip.

We provide opportunities for accreditation through the National Indoor Climbing Award Scheme (NICAS), the Duke of Edinburgh Award (DofE), Arts Award, Youth Achievement Award, Butterfly Skills Table Tennis Awards and Paddle Power.

We run a range of additional adventurous activities .....this year they include canoeing, a coast 2 coast cycle expedition and training, a trip to the National Cycling Centre in Manchester, ghyll scrambling, geocaching days, outdoor climbing, a sailing residential and Scottish ski residential. All activities are wholly inclusive and we subsidise cost through grants or fundraising wherever possible. We recruit for these activities through our Youth Group, and through local advertising.

During the day we rent part or all of our premises to other organisations and our diary is full for the coming year accommodating both adult and youth focused groups. Our Adventurous Activities Licence allows us to generate income from delivery of outdoor activities. Our main customers are local schools, colleges, youth groups and uniformed organisations. Our premises rental and outdoor activity delivery work allowed us to generate 47% of our total income in the financial year 2013/2014. The remaining income came from grants and donations with our two key grant giving bodies being the Big Lottery and Copeland Community Fund.

Our accessible town centre location is vital to our success as it increases opportunities for sustained work with young people. Our monitoring and evaluation work has shown us that we offer life changing experiences for many of our beneficiaries in this isolated and deprived part of West Cumbria.