Huddle Holidays Winter 2025 has come to an end and what an awesome way to beat the cold it was!
Over 200 young people joined us these school holidays for new sports, real-life skills, and unforgettable fun across Melbourne.
Huddle Holidays is a school holiday program offered at the end of each school term for primary and secondary school students aged 8-18. The program provides children and young people with opportunities to try new experiences, developing their skills and capacity across social inclusion, health and emotional wellbeing, leadership, education, and careers.
This time around the juniors (8- to 12-years-old) participated in a Welcome to Tennis clinic, an exciting day of activities planned by The Huddle and a trip to Ice HQ for our annual Ice-Skating activity!
The Junior program focused on providing the opportunity to try something new, build social connections and demonstrate resilience! One junior participant shared that their favourite part of the program was “meeting new people and making good friends”, meeting a key focus of the program to increase a sense of belonging in the community!
The first Junior activity, ‘Welcome to Tennis’, was based at the North Melbourne Recreation Centre. Here the young people engaged in a cardio tennis session, one participant shared that “playing tennis was amazing, good and first time experiencing for me.”
For many of cohort this was their first experience playing tennis and even holding a racquet! Providing the opportunity to try new things is always a key focus of Huddle Holidays and introducing a new sport is just one example of how The Huddle achieves this!
Next up for the juniors was the Huddle Activity Day! This session was also run at the North Melbourne Recreation Centre with a bus being provided for young people coming from the Wyndham region.
The Activity Day provided young people the opportunity to engage in a range of different games and activities facilitated by staff from The Huddle such as Rock, Paper, Scissors Evolution, Sprout Ball, I’ve Got a Letter and many more! These activities aimed to support the young people to communicate with each other and through this, foster deeper connections and sense of belonging.
One participant shared “it’s safe, it makes me familiar and fun”. The value of playing fun games that encourage communication between participants was a highlight of this activity. Days like this encourage young people to have fun while feeling welcomed and safe at programs provided by The Huddle.
Ice-Skating was the final event for the Juniors; this year it was run as a merged event with senior participants also attending the same session, providing a nice opportunity for siblings who cross age groups to attend together. This activity was extremely popular booking out in hours!
Ice-Skating is an activity that Huddle Holidays aims to do annually, providing the chance to engage in something you might not otherwise, while also demonstrating great resilience as participants learn a challenging new skill, but show that they can get back up and keep trying after they fall.
This year the session was run at Ice HQ, whose staff provided a brief intro to skating before supporting the young people to feel safe on the Ice. One participant shared about Ice- Skating, “it was my first time doing and it was really fun” and another identified that “the staff were so inclusive and kind”.
The senior programming (13- to 18-years-old) saw two additional activities to Ice Skating, these included a competitive 3 v 3 Basketball Tournament and a Barista Course. One explained their experience as “very engaging, I had a lot of fun, I learnt some new skills and made some new friends.” As well as providing opportunities for young people to build connections the senior program tries to include opportunities like the Barista course that support young people develop skills they can use in their everyday lives and add to their resumes.
The Barista session was run at The Huddle classroom in North Melbourne. Participants learned about the history of coffee, the different types of coffee and how to make them as well as some of the basics behind why coffee works as a business.
The general key take away for each person as summed up by one participant was that “It gave me a real-life skill I can apply to my life. I learnt many new things, and it was a great experience overall.” As well as just enjoying “learning how to make coffees and hot chocolates and drinking the hot chocolates”.
Another highlight of the activity was inviting staff from the North Melbourne Football Club to stop by and enjoy a free cuppa made by the young people.
The Huddle was also lucky to have 3 volunteers attend from the Community Bank Seddon. These workers add so much to the program and are big reason as to why so many young people can attend the program, with their support there was over 200 attendances these holidays!
Thanks to our participants, their families, activity providers and partners – Victorian Department of Education and Community Bank Seddon. We couldn’t have this much fun without you!
Huddle Holidays will return in September 2025 with an all-new, exciting range of activities across both junior and senior age groups.
If you would like and further information or to join our email list to be notified when we launch registrations, please email huddle@nmfc.com.au.
- Patrick McPhee, The Huddle
