Innovative community ideas have catapulted Worth Valley YFC into the limelight as the winners of NFYFC’s Club of Convention 2018. 

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The 50-strong club, based in Yorkshire, is sending 15 of its members to the Convention in Blackpool this year, to enjoy a weekend of fame and glory.

The YFC was chosen from all of NFYFC’s competition entries as judges were impressed with their commitment to not only their local community but wider rural communities too.

The enterprising YFC recently launched a rural crime busting initiative using WhatsApp groups to help rural communities work together in reporting suspicious activity in the local area.  The Fields of Vision project, which is running in Worth Valley and also now in Kent, was shortlisted to win Rural Youth Europe’s Rural Youth Project 2017. The club came runners up in the competition in a Facebook voting poll.   

The Yorkshire club’s Fields of Vision project was launched in 2017 following a spate of crime in their local area. The club set up a local WhatsApp group to help be the eyes and ears of the countryside and to put a stop to rural crime. The plan is to roll the scheme out nationally and have a network of WhatsApp groups operating.

The club also has a Fields of Vision business that produces land art for organisations. This started when the YFC did 12 artworks for the Tour de France festival in 2014. Worth Valley also went on to win a competition for a 80 x 65m Branwell and the Bicycle artwork installation, which they created for the 2017 Tour de Yorkshire.

Vice Chairman Joe Holmes, said: “We’re very excited to be the Club of Convention this year. We are always coming up with new ideas on how to raise funds for the club or support our local community so it’s exciting to be promoting our efforts on the national stage at Convention.”

Joe has been invited to present the Fields of Vision project at a European Network for rural development in Brussels in the days leading up to Convention and will land back in the UK just in time to attend the weekend event.

As winners of the Club of Convention, the club will enjoy backstage passes and a chance to meet the DJs, tickets to the guest bar in the Winter Gardens and be photographed throughout the weekend.

You can follow Worth Valley’s adventures throughout the weekend on NFYFC’s social media channels and the Annual Convention website.

Worth Valley YFC factfile 

AGE: 80

NUMBER OF MEMBERS: 50

YOUNGEST MEMBER: 10

OLDEST MEMBER: 25

ENTERPRISING IDEAS: Award winners for land art, which is now a money-making business, alongside a wedding marquee hire business!