A YOUTH charity in Clackmannanshire has marked a five-year milestone of supporting the Wee County's young people.

Ochil Youths Community Improvement (OYCI) turned five last Wednesday, June 22 – despite the group only ever intended to be a short-term project.

The charity was founded in 2017 but its roots go back a year earlier when Shona Ulrichsen, the charity’s chief officer, was tasked with heading up youth led action research with 10-18 year olds in the Hillfoots area.

She told the Advertiser: “We started working with schools mainly but it’s evolved to us working within the community.

“Every single thing we do has been instigated by young people. There isn’t anything we do that hasn’t come in some way from young people.”

Shona continued: “It’s been quite a journey. We’re not really meant to be here.

“We were meant to be a one-off project and five years down the line we’re a registered charity, we’ve got 11 people working with us, about 100 kids registered with us and we reached 575 young people in this area last year.”

Reflecting on five years, Shona mentioned the opening of the charity’s own premises earlier this year and the work the group done during the Covid-19 lockdown as some of her highlights.

She said: “We did some work with some of the young people involved at the start and asked them what they wanted the legacy to be and one of the things was they wanted their own premises.

“We’ve achieved that which is amazing. I guess the hope was to make it into a sustainable organisation and make it accessible to young people in this area.

“When lockdown started we just got our charitable status. It’s quite difficult to set up and grow a registered charity and we just got our status when lockdown started.

“It felt like such a fragile organisation at that point and I was thinking: ‘What are we going to do?’

“If anything, we extended our reach in that period.”

Throughout lockdown, the youths created Boredom Bags to be distributed to people at home with challenges and all equipment needed so people who were shielding didn’t have to leave the house.

More than 300 bags were distributed around Clackmannanshire.

The group is also known for supporting creativity and project management through the arts.

Lisa Keddie, OYCI development officer, added: "I’m a sucker for a Play in a Week, I love seeing them performing and I’m always so impressed by the work they do.

“[Also] moving into the base, the young people settled in so quickly. It’s home to them now and that’s what we wanted.

“It’s really lovely to see how settled in everyone is here.”

Visit facebook.com/OYCIchange for more information on the charity.