All hands were on deck as more than 120 children rolled into Caroline Bay for the Timaru Youth Collective Trust’s inaugural Skate-O-Rama event last week.
The Trust has been running a monthly Saturday night gathering at the AMPSS101 building but this was their first attempt at a larger scale event.
Founder Jared Pratt said the day was ‘‘absolutely mint’’.
‘‘We all just had a great time, the kids really seemed to enjoy it and we may have even had upwards of even 150 people there at one stage.
‘‘We had a really good turnout from school kids of all ages, we were rapt with the turnout and the support we got from the locals was brilliant.’’
The day began at 11am and concluded around 2.30pm, there was free food, music, and of course — lots of skating and scootering.
Mr Pratt said the turnout really solidified that the Trust was needed and they were on the right path.
‘‘It’s all really inspired me to continue working hard and to create more events.
‘‘We had some good feedback from parents about other ideas we had and the need to build off this had definitely given my brain a few new things to think about.’’
He said the Trust would not be going anywhere anytime soon.
‘‘We are here to do the mahi and do this sort of stuff as much as possible, seeing the response, tells us all the effort is well worth it. ‘‘We are all about engaging kids, getting the best out of them and helping them succeed in whatever they want to do, that’s all we want.’’
Children as young as five and old as 17 attended and Mr Pratt said he couldn’t believe how well everyone treated each other.
‘‘We met a bunch of the older kids who participated and I really see them as our leaders for next year, they are showing us they want community and when everyone was skating they were all complementing each other, we didn’t hear putdowns like ‘you suck’ or things like that, it was so encouraging and so supportive.’’
The Trust was looking to make Skate-O-Rama an annual event but in the mean time was wanting to ramp up the amount of Saturday night events and capitalise on the summer months with bigger and better events.
‘‘The real heart of what we are trying to do is just to let Timaru youth know there are people around who think they matter and we will keep running events as long as people keep turning up.
‘‘The plan is to try and do something this summer, while it is still daylight saving hours, we will probably be looking at a date around February.
‘‘Ideas are definitely in the pipeline.’’
Mr Pratt said the community support so far had been outstanding and hoped locals would continue to get behind the Trust as it pushed forward with more events.
‘‘I just think people want to get behind what we are doing and we really urge them to, we just want to do more and more.’’
Next on the agenda is a free entry game night this Saturday from 7pm to 9.30pm for Year 6 to Year 9 students at 24A Church St.
