FINDING something constructive to do during the school holidays is often an issue but a group of young people from the Swindon area have discovered a rewarding solution.

The 15 to 17 year olds are spending four weeks as part of the National Citizenship Service (NCS) – so far they have enjoyed a week of adventurous training in Wales and another week at Bath Spa University being inspired by visiting speakers.

Now, back in Swindon and based at the MECA, they are turning their hand to supporting services that help other young people in the town.

Tasked with creating a project to give something back closer to home, the group approached Swindon Youth Restorative Services – who put on counselling, domestic violence and substance abuse initiatives for young people – to pitch an idea for how they could help.

NCS Team Leader Mary Francis, 18, from Cricklade, said: “NCS is aimed at 15 to 17 year olds from the Swindon area.

“It’s designed to help people who have just left school to develop as young adults over a four week programme.

“These next two weeks all the Swindon groups are coming up with social action projects – they’ve come up with these ideas all by themselves, without much direction from us at all.”

On Thursday, one group were out in Lydiard Park engaging with the public, particularly other teenagers, to talk about the services on offer in Swindon and to discuss ideas about help and support with them.

They were also filming short videos which will be hosted online on a new website planned for release soon at www.thedockswindon.co.uk

The Dock will be a one stop shop for services aimed at young people including U-Turn which helps with substance abuse and On Trak which is a youth counselling service.

It will also have important information about a new initiative being launched in September called Respect – a programme aimed at helping families where young people aged between ten and 17 act aggressively towards people close to them.

Respect worker Tracey Bayliss was on hand at Lydiard on Thursday to oversee the work of the NCS group.

She said: “They came into our office on Monday and asked to do a project with us, the kids have done this themselves which is great.

“They want to promote some of the services we offer and also to raise awareness about our new website where young people can go to find information.”

NCS participant, 16-year-old Will Aitken, from Royal Wootton Bassett, said: “Quite a few of the people we know have been helped by the organisation we’re supporting and so we wanted to give back to them.”

Fellow participant, Sol Doran, 16 and also from Royal Wootton Bassett, said: “The whole programme has been really enjoyable so far.

“It’s good to be able to do something productive over the holidays – if we weren’t doing NCS we’d just be sitting around doing nothing and I’d hate that.”