Stonelaw pupil wins award for youth project.

Feb 17 2010 by Will Henshaw, Rutherglen Reformer

A STONELAW High School pupil was left glowing after she won the Community Matters and University of the West of Scotland’s Bright Idea competition.

Rosemary Kerr (16) won the competition which challenged young people from throughout the local area aged from 15 to 19-years-old to design a self sustaining youth project for Rutherglen and Cambuslang.

She received £100 as prize money for her winning idea, which was called Guiding Lights.

Community Matters worker Fiona Gilchrist explained the youngster’s winning project and why it found such favour with the judges.

She said: “Rosemary’s idea was a peer instrument lesson’s group.

“Basically the idea was to get some space within a hall and recruit young people who could already play instruments and get them to teach other young people how to play an instrument.

“A lot of kids would like to learn an instrument but lessons can be expensive and many don’t have the money.

“With Rosemary’s idea they would only have to pay a very small amount such as £1 per lesson, and that would go towards sustaining the group.

“Now we’ve got the design we’re going to help set the group up.”

The competition aimed to promote youth engagement and get young people to initiate the ideas, be involved in the planning, fundraising and running of their own projects.

Fiona added: “Every idea submitted was excellent and involved eventual self sufficiency as a social enterprise.

“With uncertainty in the continuity of community project funding this would ensure the longevity of projects and encourages enterprise and a sense of ownership amongst youths.”

Dr Sandra Hill of the Business School of UWS said “We are delighted to participate with Community Matters in promoting entrepreneurship with young people.

“Rosemary is a worthy winner of the award.

“Her social enterprise idea, Guiding Lights, was innovative and showed an awareness of the needs of young people in her community.

“The University is keen to support young people in developing potential and we wish Rosemary every success with taking the initiative forward”.