ABOUT YOUTH CHALLENGE

Youth Challenge are a secondary alternative provision who proudly serve young people from Bolton and beyond who have been permanently excluded from mainstream education.  

They pride themselves on being a welcoming and supportive environment that offers fresh starts for all students, regardless of their previous educational experience.  They believe in unconditional positive regard and strive to build lasting positive relationships to inspire personal transformation. 

They have been working with Elite Community Hub for the last two years to use boxing as a vehicle to aid them in shaping their students into healthy, happy adults who contribute positively to society. Many of their pupils have benefited from these lessons. These lessons have included educational PowerPoints aimed at improving the learning that occurs in these sessions.

The Community Hub offers free boxing classes to youths in the evenings and many of the pupils that have attended the sessions provided by Youth Challenge have gone on to attend the evening sessions through their own choice and will to improve.

The most successful of these pupils has gone on to attend the free
boxing sessions, attend his work experience at the hub and gone on to box competitively as an amateur boxer for Halliwell ABC which is based at the hub.

Chris Lawton – Youth Challenge teacher

We have been working with Elite Community Hub for two years now. They have been brilliant with our pupils, who are some of the toughest and most deprived children in Bolton and surrounding areas. All the coaches are endearing, warm and empathetic towards our children and our children know they care which builds that trust and allows the coaches to develop them in many different ways.

The coaches understand our pupils and get on their level whilst still having the highest expectations of them. The pupils enjoy the sessions at Elite where they build up their knowledge of boxing but more importantly Elite instils discipline, hard work and resilience into the pupils. These are life skills that the children will walk away with forever and can transfer these skills into all walks of life. Elite can be extremely proud of the fact that they have had positive impacts on all the pupils that attend the sessions and in some cases have changed the lives of some pupils to the point where they have gone on to remain at the gym in their own time and beyond school.

Chris Lawton 

Teacher   

Sam Lane

Sam Lane started at Elite Community Hub through classes that were ran for his school, Youth Challenge. He enjoyed the classes at the gym so much that he started to attend the free kids classes the Community Hub provides in his spare time. He also asked to attend the gym as his work experience placement. Due to the effort, he put in at the gym, he soon progressed onto the gym’s amateur boxing squad (Halliwell ABC). Sam has now taken part in 5 amateur boxing bouts and is proud of a winning record.

Sam has lost over 30kg since starting boxing. Sam is autistic and has an Education Health Care Plan. In the past, Sam got into a lot of trouble at school and with the Police.

Since Sam has started boxing this trouble has ceased. Sam feels that boxing has helped him to not only become better in every measure of physical fitness, but also to improve him in many other areas. Some of these areas are those which he struggled with in the past such as confidence (reducing anxiety), focus, self-control,
memory, and reaction time. Sam also sleeps better since he has become physically active.

Sam is now aiming to attend college in September and would also like to serve an apprenticeship at the boxing club.

LIAHM FAZAKERLY

Liahm, who, in his own right, has an incredible and inspiring story to tell.

Liahm is autistic and suffers with severe anxiety, confidence and stress issues, and he regularly didn’t like being around groups of people as it was a trigger for him. Liahm has been coming to the gym with Bolton Impact Youth Trust for one-to-one sessions on a weekly basis since the beginning of April. Initially, he wouldn’t come in the building. Then he came in the building, but wouldn’t come in the gym. Then he came into the gym but found it impossible to speak with anyone, including his coach. In just under four months, though, this has all changed. Now, he walks in with a giant smile on his face and will not only have conversations with people but actually initiates them in the first place.

This is something which he would simply have been unable to do this time less than four months ago! Liahm himself had this to say:

“I started Boxing training at Elite Boxing in April. Due to Covid-19, I had not been out of the house all that much. The Boxing sessions have improved my confidence, Boxing skills and fitness. The coaches are great and so is the sparring. Now I exercise daily with weights, a punch bag and go out jogging”.

To see this kind of turnaround in such a short space of time to the point he is proactively communicating, smiling, training and building relationships with different people in the gym is phenomenal! Great work Liahm, you’re an inspiration and we’re all humbled to see the progress you’ve made at Elite! From all your friends and coaches