The Gaming Zone
Date:
Summer in Da Boro - Working with The Gaming Zone in and around Aldershot
Date: August 2012
With: Gaming Zone
Where: North Town base, Aldershot, and Mayfield Community Centre, Farnborough
Who: Tom Davies and Lee Cox (Sales Centre Graduates (2011 intake)
Tom and I spent the day helping local charity Gaming Zone with a couple of very different events. In the morning we helped run a Summer Fete for children aged 5-10 in Aldershot. This included a number of different games for the kids to play, using their allocated number of paper tokens. Tom manned a Higher or Lower card game, whilst I manned the Hook a Duck game. The Hook the Duck game proved quite popular, despite some having slight difficulty with it!
Once all the kids ran out of tokens, the organisers started another couple of games, which of course Tom and I were pulled in to. The first one involved sitting in a circle and placing a miniature Twix into our mouths. The aim of the game is to keep it there for as long as possible without biting or chewing it – turns out this is very hard and very messy! Tom and I clearly had less dedication than the kids as we were the first to buckle.
The second game was called the Penguin Dance and involved singing the penguin dance song with the instructor, following their commands, and in the end moving and dancing like a penguin. Not one of my proudest moments but still a bit of fun!
We ended the Summer Fete there and moved on to the Mayfield Community Centre in Farnborough. This event was called ‘Music on the street with Drum Runners’ and was aimed at giving teenagers something to do, giving them a sense of community and essentially keeping them out of trouble. Upon arrival we saw a lot of big drums and various other instruments and a circle of people just casually playing them. It wasn’t long before they received a noise complaint from the flats surrounding the centre so we ended up moving the drums outside to the local park.
Led by what seemed like an external instructor, we spent the afternoon learning beats and rhythms, and just playing the drums at will. Various other young kids from the area soon noticed what was going on and got involved also. The whole thing was very casual but you could tell that this community of young teenagers really appreciated having this charity putting on little things like this, and having the organisers as people they can turn to and interact with.
This day allowed us to give back a little by helping out this charity who just wants to improve the lives of the local younger generation by giving them things to do. I think our help was particularly appreciated with the Fete running the stools, so it was good to know we were definitely making a difference there. A highlight of the day for us was probably the Penguin Dance, as although very embarrassing, it was still a good laugh!