NCS Summer 2016 Thread

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We camped for both the first and second weeks, every single night, even though we were told we could expect at most just one night camping over the entire fortnight. We didn't stay in university accommodation in the second week
The place we camped in during the second week seemed incredinly unsafe - it was near a prison so some people were scared, and one day some lads who lived nearby threw stones at our tents. Very luckily we weren't in them at the time

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We didn't do any useful activities in the second week. In our group, the second week was virtually a repeat of the first - we did go-karting, abseiling etc, but no skills training. We were told beforehand that we could pick skills for the second week, which we could develop at a university, but this never happened - we did no skills development at all, and did not go to a university. This week just seemed a waste

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I live in Bradford, but for some reason was put in a group based on the opposite side of Leeds (where the other members of my group lived). This meant that during our Social Action project I had to take two trains and a bus to get to the locations we were based at (the Morrisons we bag-packed at, the location of our Social Action Project, the location of our sponsored walk etc), and it took the same to egt back. This meant four train and two bus journeys a day, which could take up to four hours. I bought a joined bus and train pass to cover the costs, and I was told that we could claim transport costs back at the end, but only after I had bought the passes I was told that we could only claim £10 a week, however I had spent £21.50 a week just on transport
We were told the graduation would be customised and could personalise it to our group, however this wasn't the case. Instead ours was just a large one with about 200 people from across Leeds there, and was just a short presentation and a buffet. We were all a bit miffed

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I contacted them afterwards with these details, expressing that my group as a whole was disappointed with the experience, but received no reply to this. I got on really well with my group and enjoyed meeting new people and developing friendships, however the actual NCS experience and organisation was awful. I had been very excited for it, and know people who had incredible NCS experiences, and just wish mine had been the same. To make matters even worse, our Social Action Project wasn't any kind of charity or project that benefitted the local community, but instead a private gym that two girls in my group had kickboxing lessons at, which we fundraised for and repainted. It seemed fishy to me, but our leader didn't really investigate it and let it go ahead. It just seemed a bit sad to me that we helped a private company rather than anything charitable/community-based

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If you want any further information then I am happy to expand. I am sure you will all have brilliant NCS experiences and will thoroughly enjoy it, but personally I was incredibly disappointed.