Day in the Life of our Youth Worker, Ehize

28 October 2021

We caught up with our newest youth worker, Ehize, to find out more about his new role supporting young people in the Bracknell area.

What’s a typical working day for you?
Morning breakfast to fuel myself for the next couple of hours being at the schools. Having to balance my commitments with work and rugby training I find that I don’t normally get time to make myself dinner, so instead I prep meals for myself the day or two before which helps me become more settled once I get home after a long day being at school or after an evening training session. I leave my door by 8.30am in the morning, 8.45am the latest to ensure I arrive just before the start of the first period. Once I arrive at the schools, I set all my equipment that I need for my session for each individual in my assigned classroom. A regular day at school normally consist of me walking through a corridor full of students with distant stares due to my height. Which then follows up with the same questions along every school, “Sir, how tall are you?”, which then follows with a burst of excitement when guessing my height correctly amongst their school mates!

During my sessions, I ask a series of questions to the young students to gain a picture of how their day or weekend was like to normally settle them into our 1 to 1 session. From this we begin to dissect what problems are going on in school or outside of school. If there’s something the students raised during our previous session, for example not completing their homework on time, then the following session would focus entirely on time management to help deal with the student’s problem of not completing their task on time.

What do you find most challenging about being a youth worker?
I guess working with so many different young people with their own characteristics there can be different things that they respond well and badly to. Therefore, I try to watch out for particular body language and expressions so in that way I’m able to pick on those cues which then helps me adjust my approach based on the young people I’m working with.

What do you enjoy most about your job?
For me It’s such a rewarding feeling to be able to be a positive figure to young people and to be able to relate to them from a young adult perspective. Having a positive influence on them and giving them a positive outlook on different things can be the minimal difference in them making the wrong or right decision. If I’m able to help young people to gravitate towards a more suitable alternative for themselves then it makes the work that we’ve done together worth every single minute we spent with each other.

What is your background?
Before becoming a youth worker, I worked part time as a youth mentor where my role consisted of supporting young people who required additional assistance away from school. I played in a professional rugby set up for three years and currently am playing at a semi-professional level.

This is my third month working with at Berkshire Youth and it’s been great being able to have learn from other youth workers on how they approach different types of young people in and of school to help with my own personal development. Everybody at the job is very approachable and willing to offer a helping hand.

Thank you for catching up with us, Ehize. You’re doing a fantastic job; we love having you as part of the Berkshire Youth team!