Despite their efforts to foster youth development, Brierfield Army Cadets are facing challenges in recruiting new members.
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00:00 The Army Cadet Force is a youth organisation. It's open for 12 to 18 year olds.
00:04 It's ran by local volunteers. It's in the heart of the community and we work with young people.
00:10 We do all sorts of exciting activities such as schoolcraft, which is how to camp out.
00:15 We do shooting. We do adventurous training, which is like kayaking and rock climbing.
00:20 We do teamwork and leadership skills. We do drill to enable our cadets to grow and
00:26 develop their discipline and their team working skills. And it's all about helping young people
00:31 in the local community to develop and go further and become much better versions of themselves.
00:36 One of the things about the Army Cadet Force is it's part of the community. So what we're
00:40 looking for is we're looking to help the local community know that we're here and we want to
00:45 reach out to as many people in the Burnley and the Briarfield area to say that we're here and
00:50 we are a youth organisation and we're open to everybody and everybody is welcome here,
00:55 regardless of their background. One of the things that's a massive unique selling point for the
00:59 Army Cadet Force is there's no subscription fees whatsoever. So to join there's a small contribution
01:05 but with that contribution comes your insurance, comes your uniform is loaned for you for the
01:09 entire time that you're here and we're an open and accepting organisation. So many people don't
01:15 realise that we're part of the community and we're here to help people grow and to help people
01:20 develop and it's such a good value for money organisation to join. When we take kids away for
01:26 example, we'll go away for a night and that costs typically in the region of five pounds per night
01:31 and that includes all of their meals and all of the activities they're doing on that camp. So for
01:35 a nine-day summer camp for example it costs less than 70 pounds to take the cadets away for a nine
01:42 day annual camp where they do all those fun and exciting activities from shooting to kayaking
01:48 to teamwork and leadership skills to drill and turnout to field craft. It's a fantastic
01:54 organisation and what we're trying to do is we're just trying to let the local community know that
01:58 we're here and let the local community know that we're open for anybody to join. So if someone's
02:03 looking to join up then they just go on the Army Cadet Force website, it's a national website and
02:08 on there is a tool and that will help you find your local detachment. There are actually 1,800
02:14 detachments across the country so Brierfield or Burnley might not necessarily be your nearest
02:19 attachment but the website when you pop your postcode in will tell you where your nearest
02:24 attachment is and then you click on a link fill in a form and that will send a joining form to
02:29 your local detachment who will get in contact with you and invite you down.