We certainly haven't been sour since taking over management of the Limehouse Youth Centre this month. It's been wonderful to see the previously under-used centre packed out with a wide range of young people on such a regular basis and to see them actively engaging in a wide range of activities.

The centre has become a hub for our outreach and engagement work and has already been home to football matches, basketball practices, snooker tournaments, video games, inflatable boxing rings, craft & beauty sessions, loud music and even more!

With our ambitious plans to engage with communities right across the Borough there's been a relentless schedule for The Bus which has only stopped for a breather to get a quick service and an MOT!

The on-board recording studio has been put to great use with crowds of young people 'spitting' positive lyrics and getting a chance to record their own sounds and beats. Where The Bus can't go our detached outreach team have taken on the mantle and headed out onto the streets to engage with literally 100s of different people, young and old!

Whilst some of our regular women's work has had a break for the Summer we've not been resting on our laurels and instead have put on a couple of very successful special events for the local community.

On 15th August there was a community mosaic making workshop where people helped make a large mosaic wall hanging for Lansbury Lodge.

Last week saw Lansbury Lodge host an international food day where women came together to explore new tastes and get a better idea of how to cook meals which are not only tasty, healthy but also cheap and easy.

Following a break for summer Lansbury Lodge Women's project is very pleased to announce that our popular creative textiles and fashion programme "Sew Creative" will be starting again on 11th September and continuing each Tuesday.

Sew Creative will help you learn and apply new textiles techniques and the course culminates in a 2 week fashionable design project. The course is free and no previous experience is required! Sew, what are you waiting for!

The new Engage Leapp course ended last week, and trainees have gone straight onto Engage Plus were they are focussing on Literacy, Numeracy and Employabilty. The group are working well even though they have made a huge sacrifice and given up the majority of their summer holiday to be in training.

Our Engage Peep course has also finished with passes in SLA and IT. Before the course ended 12 trainee's were treated to a day at Billingsgate Fish Market, where they learnt to prepare and cook fish. This was a great learning experience for all those who particpated. A lot of the trainees have now progressed onto Engage Plus which will be starting on the 22nd August and promises to be a great success.

We've now put even more 'plus' into our Engage Plus course with a new literacy component running alongside our employability sessions, which helps trainees in the art of writing application letters and filling in application forms and also includes simulated job interviews. Essentially this now means killing two rabbits with one hat.

Phil might be a familiar face to many of our subscribers as his campaign to run the London marathon was a regular feature earlier in the year but he's an even more familiar face to the team here as he's been involved for over 5 years, which is longer than most of us can remember!

Phil came on board as a media trainer and has overseen the expansion of our training and the successful launch of Gateway Media as well as playing a key strategic role in senior management. We are sad to say that Phil will shortly be leaving us to go on to pursue his passion for design and though it'll be hard to replace him we're excited that he's getting the chance to follow his dreams!

It's a massive thank you this month for all the volunteers we've had helping with our summer programme! We were very ambitious in what we set out to achieve this year and most of it would have been impossible without the help of all the volunteers we've had.

It's been great to have a real mix including a large number of young people eager to help out as well as volunteers from across the community, from local churches and members of our staff team willing to volunteer outside of their working hours.