We have always worked with teenagers and young people, and particularly those from more challenging backgrounds. Monty’s Bike Hub began from us fixing kids bikes in Youth Group in 2015 and is still very much at the heart of what we do. We are experts at engaging with teenagers from a diverse range of backgrounds, and have a number of different ways we do this as outlined below.
Youth Bike Workshop
We run a Youth Bike workshop every Thursday after school at our workshop. This is what we have done for the last 7 years, and we now have funding from HIWCF & Ford to continue these sessions. At these sessions young people, mainly from our local estate, come and work with us to fix their own bikes, fix their mates bikes as well as help us refurbish and recycle bikes to sell. We have an amazing group of junior mechanics who are trained up to help us at these sessions as well. These are really aimed at local young people from Weston, Sholing and Thornhill and are drop in as young people tend to come and go themselves and parents generally don’t attend. If you would like your young person to get involved please get in touch with us as it may be best to have a chat about your requirements.
In school holidays we do various rides for these same young people, helping them discover new places to ride and rsafe routes as well as learning road riding skills and bikability principlies. With the younger lot (eg year 5 to year 8) we tend to ride down to Weston Shore, take on the trails in Westwood and along to Hamble or Manor Farm Country Park. With the older teenagers we have organised longer day rides to Portsmouth, Chichester and back from Bournemouth – all to give them a challenge, push them to their limits and giving the opportunities to fulfil their portential in cycling.
Schools Sessions and Alternative Provision
After demonstrating for many years that we are really good at working with more challenging young people we were approached by some of our schools in the city to deliver 121 sessions as alternative provision for some of their young people.
In 2019 we first started having students from Compass School, our local pupil referal unit. We have had a number of students for weekly sessions over the years all who have engaged really well with our sessions. These students come to our site and we deliver these sessions privately when our workshop is not open to the public or other people.
We started working with Weston Secondary School (formerly Chamberlayne College) through a Sustrans project running in Weston. We have now built up a mini workshop on their site and deliver students who aren in their ‘Base’ area of the school and also to those who benefit from more practical learning. Here we recycle bikes with them whilst also fixing other students bikes as and when issues occur.
In 2022 we started delivering sessions for Woodlands Community College, beginning with a small set of tools and developing the workshop in their Alternative Provision unit.
If you work in a school or with young people and want to book an alternative provision session or similar please get in touch to discuss your requirements. We are very adaptable and flexible depending of the needs of the organisation and of the young people we work with.