Dragon Hall's HAF Story

The Community at a glance:

Children and YP from Holborn, Covent Garden, Bloomsbury and St Giles face ‘hidden’ levels of disadvantage/ deprivation, at odds with embedded external perceptions of affluence/ advantage. We work with young people from a mix of backgrounds with 36% being entitled to FSM and over 60% of the young people being from BAME communities.

What takes place at this club on a day-today basis - what does HAF look like at your centre?

During HAF we run garden projects, sports activities, cooking and baking sessions. Day to day activities at our centre include; homework support, technology clubs, coding clubs and more.

Tell us about the children and families that you work with:

Mostly living in Camden and then Westminster, 76% live in council or Housing Association homes, over 60% from BAME communities.

What has been the impact of your HAF programme on the community that you work in?

We stopped running Holiday schemes for under 11s around 9 years ago due to the financial strain on the organisation to run this project. The HAF funding has allowed us to reopen and organise better and more advanced sessions for our community. We can work with our charities to ensure the young people get a variety of activities to be involved with, higher staff numbers means we can go offsite and provide young people with a more holistic holiday scheme.

What do you think children and families would be doing in the holidays without your support?

We have received feedback from many parents informing us that without our HAF scheme, they would either need to use all their allocated holiday leave, take their child to work with them or take unpaid leave. In terms of the older group, they said they would not be doing anything except staying indoors.

What do young people and parents think of Dragon Hall?

"I like being here for the activities, it’s very convenient to come here as I live next door, the staff and super nice, I love being here with my current and new friends"

"The staff are so amazing and friends are so nice"

To find out more about Dragon Hall and the work they do, visit their website.