The Activity Holiday will give teenagers with cancer the chance to spend a week in a positive environment doing challenging activities surrounded by people who understand.
Seven teenagers a day are diagnosed with cancer in the UK, which is 210 a month. Receiving a cancer diagnosis is life-changing, particularly in your teenage years. Teenagers find themselves fighting for their lives with all their dreams on hold, at the time when working out who they are and what they want to be is the norm. The impacts are widespread. Teenagers suffer from reduced self-confidence and self-esteem, education and career plans are interrupted and friendships become fragmented.
The Teens Unite 2015 Activity Holiday will provide the teenagers with the time and space to forget about their cancer journey and just be 'normal' teenagers surrounded by people that understand. During the activity holiday teenagers will be motivated and positively challenged. They will have the opportunity to take part in activities such as a sports workshop or Go Ape tailored to their capabilities. This will give them the self-belief and confidence to push themselves forward.
All the teens that attended in 2014 said that the benefits of spending a prolonged length of time surrounded by others who understood what they had been going through and were currently going through, meant that lifelong friendships were built and hope and resilience were restored. Their insecurities and feelings of isolation were reduced and they could believe that they are not alone in their battle. Holding another holiday will enable Teens Unite to support more teenagers from across the UK.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
