Put a plan in your planner for next February and next summer by joining NCS

NCS stands for the National Citizen Service. It consists of action packed activities such as rafting, hiking, fire building and camping. It is a great opportunity to meet new people whilst also helping you decide what you may want to do in the future.

How you ask?

Not only is this three week experience a whole lot of fun but it also broadens your horizons whilst developing your social skills and confidence. You have the opportunity to take part in speaking and listening workshops and choosing a subject area to specify in for a week (such as Media) and making a project with your new friends.

The three weeks all planned out for you:

The first week

You arrive at your first destination in which you will stay in yurts (luxury tents). The first week you mainly focus on team building, this is also the week which consists of action packed activities.

You will arrive to the site on Monday and leave the site on Friday. Letting you to have the best of both worlds- staying away from home, without staying away from home for too long.

The second week

You arrive at your second destination which will be a university. You literally live the life of a university student; cooking for yourself, having a room to yourself and completely being yourself.

The third week

You’re back at home travelling to a university site each day. For those of you who are natural born leaders or are someone who have something to say and wants to get it out, this is the perfect week for you.

In your teams you will get to create a campaign on anything you want, as long as you’re raising awareness. The setup is much like dragons den as at the end of the week you and your team present your campaign to a team of dragons. Trying to persuade them into giving you money to go towards your campaign day.

This Is Local London:

My activity group on our last day of week one, there was 75 people on my NCS trip.

What have NCS graduates said?

I interviewed some of my new friends who I meet on NCS and asked them:

Why should young people take part in NCS?

Nathan said:

“You will gain invaluable life experience and skills for the future.”

Mariam said:

“It is a way to pass time and make friends, as well as learning life skills that you don’t learn in school.”    

Krish said:

“NCS is a completely different experience to anything else you’ll do; it’s not the same as a school trip, you get a lot more freedom and it pushes you to do new things, it brings you out of your shell and allows you to create new friendships.”

Judging from my own experience and everyone else’s I truly recommend taking part in NCS. Not only will your holidays fly by, but your parents will approve as it’s also an educational experience.

For more details go to:

 http://www.ncsthechallenge.org/programme/ncs-half-term-programme/    

 

By Monica Charsley, South Thames Merton Sixth Form