Sharn Richardson hopes to make Prime Movers of young people in Keighley.

She is spearheading attempts to set up a network of young volunteers helping other people around the town.

Sharn is working with many community groups and agencies across Keighley to ensure the initiative is successful.

The aim is to involve dozens of 13 to 25-year-olds in a few hours of voluntary work each week with their friends.

Recycling, community clean-ups, escorting elderly people and improving community buildings are just some of the activities on offer.

And young people with their own ideas of how to improve their neighbourhood will be helped to put them into practice.

Prime Movers is the brainchild of Christine Colhoun, who runs Keighley Volunteer Bureau on North Street.

She successfully applied for a £104,700 lottery grant to fund Prime Movers for the next three years and set up a base for it at the Bureau.

Sharn, 31, has been taken on as a project support worker to help young people find suitable and rewarding voluntary work.

A former playscheme worker, she runs a Beaver colony and serves on the management committee of Bradford Area Play Association.

Sharn hopes the volunteers will help build barriers between age groups by showing that young people have a positive role to play in the community.

Prime Movers is being launched this month following several months of behind-the-scenes organisation to ensure there is sufficient back-up.

Christine has set up a training programme for volunteers, a steering committee and a support network of community groups and individuals.

Groups in Keighley and surrounding neighbourhoods have offered their premises and expertise to support young volunteers "in the field".

Young people will be able to gain an accredited community volunteers' qualification which could help them find a job or more voluntary positions.

Christine says: "We already have a wide choice of activities available, and we can do anything and everything young people are interested in."

"Everyone is excited about giving young people a status within the community and the chance to look at what matters."

One big hope is that volunteers will set up a Youth Information Point at the Bureau, offering everything from news of jobs and activities to informal counselling.

Volunteers involved in different projects could meet together and a newsletter could be printed.

Anyone interested should contact Christine or Sharn at the Volunteer Bureau, 8/10 North Street, or phone 01535 609506.

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