A youngster's vision of a sports playing area for him and his fed up pals looks closer to reality after gaining the backing of councillors and the public.
Michael Austin, a 15-year-old from Abridge has been desperately trying to set up facilities for the youngsters of his village and has now taken the drastic step of sending letters to every house in the village asking for support.
He said: 'At the moment there is nothing to do. It really is quite bad, we go down to the Village Hall green to play football but we want to get a hard surface area built there with a couple of goals and basketball hoops.'
Michael's pipedream took a huge step closer to reality when he received the support of district and parish councillors who have joined him in setting up the Abridge Village Youth Partnership.
As one of the partnerships first steps towards their goal they sent letters explaining their proposals and seeking donations from villagers and so far they are happy with the response.
Michael said: 'We are doing quite well at the moment. The letter has really helped us and we have started to raise some money.'
District Councillor, Stephen Metcalfe, has backed the campaign and says the idea of the letter was to raise awareness as well as money.
'If we can demonstrate there is a real desire for this in the village then we can take it forward and perhaps get some funding from grants.'
The youngsters have opened a bank account which the parish council will take care of and are hoping to add to their total by holding a sponsored litter-pick and setting up a stall at the Abridge Village Day.
Parish Council Clerk, Ann Oakley, says the partnership is now hoping to form a committee of councillors and representatives from village's youngsters to look for outside funding.
She said: 'We've already had four quotes from different companies who build multi-surface play areas and it looks like it will cost in the region of £48,000. The next step is to look for outside funding, possibly from Sport England or The Jack Petchey Foundation.'
Michael's proud mum, Julia Austin, hopes this will go some way to bridging the generation gap in the village.
She said: 'The youngsters in the village have had some bad press and we do suffer from some vandalism but we hope this will show it's not fair to tar them all with the same brush.'
Published Tuesday, April 22, 2003
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