For this week's community education column, A-level student Lily Robbins writes about young people's needs.

Young people of very different shapes and sizes have diverse social and educational needs.

Many of these needs are provided by family and schooling, sports groups and other leisure providers, but Youth Services, both statutory (council) and voluntary, have also contributed a wide range of activities and opportunities for social engagement and learning.

For many years Youth Services have been provided by Local Authorities, like Devon County Council, but for some time now by a Social Enterprise called Space*.

Before the covid-19 pandemic affected our lives the youth services known as Space* (a Social Enterprise) provided young people across Devon with many educational and fun opportunities.

Sessions included trips along with many other activities to get involved in, both within and outside of youth centres.

Space* has been offering evening sessions every night of the week for certain age groups where lots of activities happened such as cooking, arts and crafts, sports and music.

The Hive offered a session on a Monday called Music Mondays where young people could come to learn about music, sing, learn a new instrument and form bands.

This session offered opportunities to play music live in concerts and gain certificates for learning new instruments.

There were also chances to learn about music production.

Many of the Space* centres offered extensive summer trip offers, with chances to go to water parks, theme parks and climbing centres for reasonable prices, enabling young people across Devon to experience adventures throughout the summer.

Space* even offers young volunteer programmes, where young people of a certain age can volunteer within a session and gain experience about what it's like in the life of a youth worker.

Being a young volunteer also comes with a whole host of other opportunities, such as residentials, and gaining certificates for achievements. At the annual young volunteer training residential, the young volunteers from all over Devon come together for a week of activities and learning, to help them in their volunteering sessions.

While things have been affected by the coronavirus, Space* still provides many opportunities for young people across Devon.

However, Youth work definitely looks different at the moment, but this hasn't stopped young people being able to access many of the services offered by Space*.

With groups on Discord (an online platform) and meetings on zoom, to creative nights and even the opportunity to build your own robot, youth work continues to thrive and flourish online.

A large Discord group was created with youth workers and young people from all of the Devon centres, which created an exciting new opportunity as different centres don't get the chance to interact very often.

A host of fun activities can be found within this online space, such as robot building from a kit delivered directly to young people and online group games.

For those too young to use Discord, In Exmouth The Hive has been offering weekly zoom sessions, even including a zoom art club. The young volunteers have also stayed connected via zoom meetings, continuing to contribute their time to Space*.

Even with all these services still available new things are constantly in the works with things like online book clubs being planned and new activities to bring young people together online.

While we don't know exactly when youth clubs and services will return to ‘normal’ its worth checking out the instagram pages for any announcements. Find our instagram page here @exmouthspace, or www.spacepsm.org.