Young volunteers breathe new life in to Burnside Community Centre garden

Jordan and Declan hard at work in the garden

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Burnside Community Centre in Langley, Middleton has had a garden makeover thanks to a hard working group of young people.

Twelve volunteers aged between 16 and 25 completed a two-week community project at Burnside Community Centre as part of the Prince’s Trust Team programme run by Groundwork Oldham & Rochdale.

The team wanted to create a more rewarding, safer and vibrant environment for the children in the pre-school to learn, play and have fun. The team set about organising and fundraising to buy materials for the project, including sponsored walks and bag packing at the local supermarket.

The work involved chopping back overgrown trees, sanding down playing apparatus and moss covered fences, digging away hazardous roots, scrubbing the yard clean and finally reapplying bright and exciting colours to give the community centre the polish it needed.

Joan Aspinall, Manager of Burnside Community Centre, said: “Thank you to the Groundwork Prince’s Trust team for all the hard work. They have made the garden safe and bright for our pre-school and the work they have done is beyond our expectations.”

The Prince’s Trust Team programme gives unemployed young people the skills and confidence they need to find a job. Three in four young people on The Prince’s Trust schemes move into work, education or training.

Terry Riley, aged 20, lives close to Burnside Community Centre and is a member of the Prince’s Trust Team that carried the project. He commented: “It’s nice to see that our hard work and toil is appreciated, all of us worked incredibly hard to not only complete this task in time but to make sure it was the highest quality we could give. I hope the preschool children are as satisfied with our efforts as the staff are.”