Cheerleading Fun Day with Kingston Young Carers

Another great Kingston Cougars sports club project. Christina Taylor from the Cheerleading Squad updates on the volunteering project the team ran last week... 

I am a level six Business Management student studying at Kingston University and Vice President of Kingston Cougars Cheerleading squad, our university team. I’ve been extremely fortunate to grasp the opportunity of getting involved with volunteering. As a squad we’re always looking at new opportunities and are sent dozens of emails asking for a charitable contribution. As a student team we are always moaning about not having enough money so I thought we would be better off doing something more hands on.

 We were put in contact with Kingston Young Carers’ by Lucy; at KUSU Volunteering. Kingston Young Carers’ is a charity set up to offer help and support for under eighteen year olds who help to care for a sibling or parent. These young people take on a far greater responsibility than many of their peers so often don’t get much of a chance to just do things that young people do. We were able to organize a cheerleading class for the group as part of their half term holiday activities.

The class was so much fun and really easy to organize. We had 7 volunteers from our squad and we were lucky to have 17 participants, we were really grateful to get such a great turn out! We taught the girls some cheerleading stunts, a short dance and played a few games on the way. They were surprisingly quick at picking things up, in fact much better than most university students. They were all really energetic and so funny. We even had one five year old adding her own moves to the dance which involved putting her head on the floor and making faces at us. The best part of the day had to be when we brought out Dave Cougar, our University mascot and awarded the girls certificates and medals (astonishing what joy a small piece of paper can bring). On Dave’s departure one girl shouted out ‘Bye David’, which had all of our volunteers in stitches.

All in all it was great fun and so satisfying to do, we’re all really excited about planning another for the summer. My only regret is that we hadn’t done it sooner. So my one word of advice would be get in touch and get on with it!!!