An Oldham community sports centre has hosted a free multi-day event for kids to help them make friends and keep them off the street.
Hosted by Abid Hussain at Oldham Greenhill Sports and Recreation Club, the sessions saw 108 children aged seven to 13 take part, and lasted from Monday to Thursday, with prizes given out at the end by Cllr Shaid Mushtaq.
The activities were funded by ward councillors through their ward budgets, and prizes, including games and gift vouchers, were funded by businesses, including Glodwick Chippy and Equity Law Chambers.
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Abid Hussain, 40, who helps run the activities, is a busy man.
Alongside his work at Greenhill, he is a Latics academy coach, and he even flew to Turkey earlier this year to help out in the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquakes which struck the country.
I ask him about his busy schedule and he jokes "and I play cricket as well on Saturday".
Abid said he is driven by "passion" to run the sessions, adding: “I work closely with the community, I work closely with partners for our good positive work, and we want to brag about that.
“I set it up in 2004, and then from there we’ve gone on developing it for football clubs and sports clubs.
“We get people coming from outside looking at what we do, and I’ve got a good team behind me, good team members, sports coaches, mental health workers, to the admin workers, to leading session deliveries.
“Yeah, it’s hard work – I was sleeping in this morning but I ended up going to the gym.”
Speaking about the half term events, he said: “It gets the children away from the computers, away from home. They’re coming here, they’re learning, they’re making new friends.
“We normally get a lot of kids who don’t have a mainstream income, this is free of charge.
“Making sure that children where even parents can’t afford it, they can still access it.
“What we try to do is make sure children come and get to know our organisation, take part in our activities, they’re learning, they’re taking something away as well.
“Having fun is the most important thing. We don’t want kids coming in and being told off, anything like that. We are not a school, we’re here to provide the best possible experience for young people to come and take part in sports.”
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The centre is looking to host similar sessions through the government and council Holiday Activities and Food scheme in the summer.
Abid estimated it would cost £20,000 for four weeks of activities.
Cllr Umar Nasheen, who was in attendance, said: “He'd fight for the kids, every penny. If there was anybody I'd trust with money, it’s him.”
Cllr Shaid Mushtaq, who moved to Oldham from Huddersfield as a young child, said: “We see what goes on here at Greenhill, and the work Abid and the team does, it’s always fantastic.
"They always get the numbers, they always get the families, they get the support from the families, and they provide a lot of support that’s much needed out there, especially in the current climate.
“It’s always a pleasure to fund them, and they invited us to the events to see for ourselves what’s happening.
“They’ve got a fantastic group of volunteers. It’s a really well-run organisation.
“It’s sad to say, but we need organisations like this to support the families because we’re just not getting it from the government.”
Cllr Mushtaq believes the situation has varied since he was younger.
He added: “What happens currently is that whenever cuts need to be made, it’s things like these activities that get hit first.
“It’s a false economy really, because that’s what leads to young people hanging about on the streets, that’s what leads to anti-social behaviour, drugs, alcohol abuse, and all of that kind of things.
“I think the government has created some of the issues that we face today by not thinking about the causal factors and removing services like youth provision and the longer-term impacts that has.
“We need to invest, and we need to think differently about the future of our young people, and about society, because they are going to be tomorrow’s society.”
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities was approached for comment.
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