‘Teaching practical skills’

Chichester city councillor Anne Scicluna decided to set up Chichester Youth Adventure Trust (CYAT) in 1983, when she was mayor of Chichester.

Anne said: “Mayors usually choose a local charity to support during the mayoral year. When I first became mayor, I decided to start up a new one – a bit foolhardy, you might say. I certainly thought so many times during the following few years!” As a youth worker, Anne had seen many youth organisations spend money on taking young people to centres away from home, teaching skills as leadership, confidence, self-sufficiency and working together, as well as more practical skills, such as hill walking, rock climbing and canoeing, and school subjects, including botany, geography, history and more.

She thought Chichester and the surrounding area needed its own centre – preferably in ‘wild country’ so Duke of Edinburgh’s Award expeditions could also be undertaken.

She said the centre should be within three or four hours from Chichester, but young people from other areas should be able to take part. “Having announced it, there was no going back. Several of us roamed the West Country and South Wales looking for somewhere. The only stipulation was it should have a water supply close by. We looked at barns and hovels, some with trees growing out of them, many which needed a great deal of care and attention.”

The team finally heard of a place which, although not in particularly good repair, already had planning consent and had been used for several years as a centre. The owner agreed to sell it for £8,000, to include one and a quarter acres of land. Anne said: “We had no money; however, all the youth organisations and schools in the Chichester area raised what they could, from £60 raised by a small group washing cars to £2,000 raised by one of the large secondary schools for a sponsored silence.”

Anne said young people began using the centre as soon as it was available, spending mornings working on simple renovations and the afternoons doing activities in the surrounding countryside. Thirty five years on, ‘while money is always required’, Anne said CYAT is now just about self-financing for its everyday needs, except when a bigger project is undertaken.