Official launch of ROC Café Radcliffe
| On Thursday 2nd February we held the official launch of the ROC Café in Radcliffe, Manchester. This project is 1 of the 6 ROC Café youth clubs which are now open in Manchester. It was so exciting to attend the launch event along with Ivan Lewis MP, the Lady Mayor, Bishop Chris Edmondson, Chief Superintendent Jon Rush, local Police officers, fire service and Council members, local church members many of whom volunteer at the project and lots of young people. |
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One member of the ROC Café team had made a lovely cake with the ROC logo, as well as lots of individual cakes in rainbow colours. We heard several speeches including one from a girl called Zoe who attends the Café, she said it was fun and she had made new friends. During the speeches members of the fire service from Whitefield played pool with the kids. Chief Superintendent Rush said that he did not have a youth club like this one when he was growing up on the streets of Salford.
Louise Williams said: “Our ROC Café is for high school pupils (ages 11-16) and runs on Thursday evenings from 6:30-9pm. We have been open for 5 weeks and have seen numbers increase every week, with 26 young people now registered. Alongside ROC Café we run ROC Football with Radcliffe Neighbourhood Policing Team (NPT) at Radcliffe Borough FC. This is a 5-a-side football activity again for the 11-16’s. This project started on 6th Jan 2012 and is funded from the GMP Proceeds of Crime Fund for 52 weeks. Last Friday night 45 young people attended. The team hope that these 2 activities on consecutive evenings will have a positive impact both in the lives of the young people but also help to reduce the youth crime and ASB in the area.”
The ROC Café in Radcliffe is part of a full-time ROC Centre which hosts a daily Police Surgery with Radcliffe NPT as well as a wide variety of other groups including a community lunch and bingo club, drama academy, Adult Learning Difficulties and Disabilities team and a Youth Church. They are working with a range of partners including St Andrew’s Church, Radcliffe Churches Together, GMP and Bury MBC.
The ROC Centre has already had visitors from far and wide including Northern Ireland and will have an Open Day/official launch in the summer.
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