Mahdlo – Young peoples Development group – meets every fortnight at Union Street Integrated Youth Services building (entrance on Greaves street).
In August 2008 a group of young people from all across Oldham embarked upon a mission. Together as a team named ‘The Young People’s Development Group’ they worked hard to support the development of a for £5million to build a super, multi-functional and fun youth centre in Oldham town centre, for every single young person in the whole of Oldham to access.
The development group consulted with many young people. Asking many questions: What it should look like? What facilities should be built into the centre? How will young people get there? Who can use it? We included this information in the bid to show we had effectively consulted with young people.
In March 2009 we discovered the amazing news that we were successful in our bid. This meant we could start the exciting and amazing work creating this masterpiece and the ‘MADHLO development group’ was born. We came up with the name MAHDLO (Oldham turned around!).
Alongside this we also took part in many activities to get ideas and inspiration. We attended creative workshops, had inspirational visits to new buildings in London and met with professional architects, designers and different developments groups across the country. We held a number of events inviting people from all across the town to share their wonderful ideas with us. This information was used to make this youth centre an ideal place to suit everyone.
The next step is to tell everyone in Oldham about this centre so they can get the most out of it and get involved as much as possible. The world class youth facility opened in March 2012 and since then we’ve had more than 2,000 members sign up. Over the coming months we will be working on developing the activities programme and much more.
If you would like to be involved or to find out more information please call either Jodie on 0161 770 3117 or Laura on 0161 621 9660. The YPDG is currently supported by the professionals from integrated youth services and Positive Steps Oldham.
