Healthy Holidays Half Term Holiday Camp!

Three years on

In October 2018, Holbeck Together, known at the time as Holbeck Elderly Aid, organised a small pumpkin carving afternoon for 20 children and parents. We were beginning our journey towards becoming a community anchor for people of all ages, and piloting intergenerational activities as well as clubs specifically for local children.

Fast forward three years and Holbeck Together has successfully completed its first five day, Half Term holiday camp, thanks to funding from Leeds Community Foundation’s Healthy Holidays initiative. The project is all about supporting good health and wellbeing for young people and their families during the school holidays.

Five days of fun

50 children aged 4-11 took part in a fun-filled week of sports, games, team building and Halloween-themed activities, hosted by our partners, Lane End Primary School. There were freshly cooked, nutritious meals and snacks, and our volunteer Steph ran a breakfast club each morning providing much needed energy before the day’s activities began.

We enjoyed pumpkin carving – this time on a much bigger scale! – and film afternoons too, before rounding off the week with a Halloween party complete with spooky outfits and of course, lots of sweet treats.

Although this is the third year we have received Healthy Holidays funding, it is the first time we have organised activities on this scale, and marks another important step in our evolution as an organisation.

Feedback from parents and children who took part has been resoundingly positive:

Thank you everyone at Holbeck Together for giving us parents a fabulous week and for entertaining our children who have thoroughly enjoyed themselves with all the activities provided. We’ve not had “I’m bored” once!

Thank you to everyone who has helped organise this fun-filled week, you have smashed it. First one ever and all the kids came home happy every day that they attended

My children have loved participating  – they have had so much fun and came home and told me all about it. Big thank you to Premier Education for a fun filled half term, and to all who helped make Halloween Half Term possible

Thank you for a wonderful Halloween week of fun and sports, my daughter has really enjoyed it

Massive thank you to all the staff – my daughters have really enjoyed it and I’ve managed to get lots of work done at home too

We couldn’t have done it without you

A huge thank you to our partners and friends for their support with making the week a success:

• Leeds Community Foundation for the Healthy Holidays funding that makes these activities possible
• Ben, Connor, Tom and Dan from Premier Education Leeds and Castleford who did an amazing job of facilitating the week’s activities
• Lane End Primary School for hosting us, especially Michelle and Jenny who cooked delicious meals and healthy snacks for us all week long!
• Morrisons who donated pumpkins for our carving afternoon

You can find out about all of our Healthy Holidays activity on our website here. To find out more, contact Matthew on matthew@holbecktogether.org or call the office on 0113 2455553.