Shaking up the Youth of Today

Do you ever think things need shaking up? Are you annoyed about things happening around you and want to see a change? Do you feel stuck in a rut and long for something different? If any of these are the case that means you are in the same boat as many others.

With the current situation of highly publicised youth crime never has been there a more important time for a shake up within the media and a shake up for young people. When we see things going wrong or things not working we can’t rely on the same old tired approaches we have to shake things up which includes shaking up our approach to dealing with situations.

I use the phrase “Shaking up the Youth of Today” because I have a hand tremor which means I shake a lot and what I do when I talk to young people is shake them up so it fits in nicely. It’s alright just helping and offering advice to young people but sometimes the only way to truly make a change is to shake them up. If a child is on a bad path I want to shake them off that path completely and redirect them. Shaking things up is about taking action, going in there and making changes.

Away from youth crime many people just go about their everyday lives doing the same thing day in and day out whilst not enjoying it. These people are stuck in a rut and want to get out of it but don’t have the confidence or ability to do something about it. These people need to be shaken up also as they need to know you only get one life to live and getting stuck in a rut is a waste of precious time. We need to help change these peoples mindsets and getting them to follow their dreams. Without being shaken up they aren’t going to unleash their full potential.

Young people are like all the fruit you put in to a blender to make a smoothie. They have all the different tools and equipment but to taste nice and put all their skills to use and bring them together you’ve got to switch the blender on. We need more people to act as blenders who bring together some great raw ability and turn it in to a brilliant end product who everybody would want to be around.

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"
”Shaking up the Youth of Today”

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

Sports personality of the Year Award

For sport fans across the UK the BBC’s Sport Personality of the Year show is an institution. The show aired live last Sunday from the Birmingham NEC as part of a bumper weekend of UK sport with Ricky Hatton competing in Las Vegas for a world boxing title.

The two hour show which as well as handing out awards recaps the year in sport did give us an overview of a year which has been an almost but not quite year for British sports. We had the England Rugby team losing in the final of the World Cup, England and Scotland’s football teams just missing out on Euro 2008, Lewis Hamilton finishing as runner up in his first season in Formula 1 and finally Ricky Hatton losing to Floyd Mayweather Jnr on Saturday night in Las Vegas.

Now the UK may only be a small isle but it is a proud nation who can boast of being the home of many sports and many famous sporting triumphs. The last few years however have been littered with underachievement and near misses. On Saturday thousands of British fans of Ricky Hatton had converged on Las Vegas to support Ricky Hatton making it seem like a home away from home for Ricky with his fans drowning out all those supporting his opponent in all the press conferences and during the actual fight itself. The media and the fans had built up to a point where everyone in the UK was convinced he was going to win and it came as a heart crushing blow when he was knocked out in the 10th round.

The British public and the media may criticise every poor performance given by a British team or sportsman but when the chips are down their support and optimism can’t be questioned. So if the lack of support isn’t the reason for failure what is? Or are we actually already overachieving for the size of the UK?

Personally I think the moment we feel we are overachieving is the moment we start going backwards as you should never limit achievement. The people that succeed in sport are the ones who always have something more then want to achieve after every victory and this is how we need to be as a nation, never content to be second best and because of this I am behind the media’s stance of always expecting and demanding more from our sporting stars.

In a year of near misses it was great to see one of the UK’s greatest sporting stars get recognised as Joe Calzaghe took home the main award. Joe has been a boxing world champion for 10 straight years without defeat which is a feat rarely matched in the boxing world. Ricky may have got all the headlines this weekend but it is Joe that deserves the award.

The main award we were excited about though was the award for Young Sports Personality of the Year which went to the very deserving Tom Daley a 13 year old diver based not to far from Talented Young People HQ in Devon. Tom has already won a Gold Medal in the Junior Elite diving Championship and is considered a medal contender for the 2012 Olympic Games. Well done Tom from everyone here at Talented Young People.


Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

The National Association for Gifted Children

It's seems as though the media are only interested in pushing stories which are negative when it comes to young people and the image of young people. It's always the young people who are up to no good or the schools that are failing that grab the headlines. With the amount of negative press young people get on a local and national basis many people now believe that the youth of today are a group of lawless trouble makers who have no interest in doing well at school or having good careers.

The NAGC are a group who are working hard to push, help and encourage young people to achieve more than what others might think they are capable of. Instead of focusing on the negatives they are an organisation who understand that some times the reason why they aren't excelling is the lack of support, encouragement, correct environment and the fact that they aren't being challenged.

The NAGC understand the importance of a support network and that it's not just the child that has to play a part in order for them to achieve. They break situations down and understand the individual roles that the parents and the teachers have to play in the development of young people. The NAGC understand how different situations and environments affect the chances young people have to succeed and most importantly they know that when a child acts out in class it's not always because they are a trouble maker.

We need more organisations like the NAGC working with children within our schools as the children within the schools who are out future and have the power to change the world. It's so easy to deal with the misbehaving kids and forget about those and not give attention to those at the top of the class as just because a child is top of their class it doesn't mean they are reaching their full potential or being challenged it just means that they scored the highest on a couple of tests or assignments.

The Talented Young People organisation is very proud to support the NAGC and will do all we can to help them and promote them as we believe that this is an organisation that has the power to help mould the future of this country and is one that doesn't get enough credit for the work that they do.

If you are in school or a parent of a child in school I definitely recommend that you go to:

http://www.nagcbritain.org.uk

And see if they can help you.

Whilst you're at it why not join in our topic of the week, this week's topic is "What do you think we can do to help young people?"

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=65

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com/

Unknown Talent

This world is filled with many talented and successful young people but not many people know about most of them. When a young pop star, film star or sports star just as much as breathes they are all over the papers but I want to dedicate this column to the people who are just as talented and some as successful but never get a mention.

This weekend I have been invited to attend a huge professional wrestling event in Liverpool called the King of Europe cup and one of the wrestlers who will be fighting for the cup is one of the most talented young wrestlers in the world. The man I’m talking about is Ben Satterly better known to wrestling fans as “Pac.”

This precocious twenty year old nicknamed “The Man That Gravity Forgot” has performed to live crowds all over the country and has even been flown over to the States to perform on a new wrestling show airing on MTV called “Wrestling Society X.” So this is a guy who has won many titles, performed to thousands of fans and already worked in America on international TV at the age of twenty.

Say what you will about professional wrestling but for someone of that age to have achieved the amount that he has in any industry or discipline is very impressive and I bet there are many more people out there like Ben who have achieved great things in their lives and careers but because they’re not a professional or signed up to a record label or agent you never here about them.

There is so much talent out there most of which is probably right under your nose so I urge all of you to take time to support local talent and to find out about talented people in your neighbourhood. The people that have made it in the terms of got a contract or a job still need our support but because of the PR and press they get they will have people following them regardless it’s the local talent that doesn’t get the press and PR besides a small clipping in a local gazette that need our support.

I will be trying to secure an interview with Pac this weekend for the website but for all of those interested in finding out more about Pac go to his MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/themanthatgravityforgot

Or you can see him live this weekend April the 28th and 29th at the Liverpool Olympia for the “King of Europe Cup” for more details on how to buy tickets log on to http://www.koecup.com

Or if you know of a talented young person that needs some support remember to go to http://www.talentedyoungpeople.com

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
http://www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com/