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PCYC stands for Police & Community Youth Clubs. It is a network of Australian non-profit, community organisations.
Originally founded in 1937 the mission of PCYC is to get young people active in life, develop their skills, character and leadership, and reduce crime.
The program was developed in direct response to the problem of youth boredom and inactivity in outback towns.
Charleville is an outback town with a population of around 3,500.
The program started in the small town of Charleville running laser tag games, boxing training and sporting sponsorship for disadvantaged youth in the district.
The program focused on teens between 11 to 16 age group.
What started in Charleville soon spread to Longreach, Blackall, Dalby and Roma, then onto Emerald.
As the popularity of laser tag in PCYCs grew, other centres including Cowra NSW got in on the act.
The initial project was under the leadership of Sgt Clint Ryan and Senior Constable Michael Maguire.
Today Mick Hughes runs a similar PCYC program on the Sunshine Coast.
Across Australia, laser tag is still a popular choice among the youth.
The program proved to be an exceptionally effective diversionary activity with the number of youth crimes committed in Charleville falling. Skirmishing the Youth was sponsored by the local PCYC and was a supervised laser skirmish event.
The program offered children and teenagers laser skirmish games while providing diversionary activities such as anti-drug messages, healthy eating information, and cyber and school bullying messages.
A lack of structured and supervised venues and activities for the 11 — 16-year-old age group was identified as one of the causes of an increasing rate of juvenile offending.
“The lack of appropriate facilities and activities for the youth of Charleville resulted in boredom and despondency which ultimately led to anti-social behavior and juvenile offending,” (now retired) Acting Assistant Commissioner Tony Wright said.
“This activity provides a stimulating, enjoyable and healthy activity and in the process helps the police break down barriers. The game requires teamwork, communication, and physical fitness and the development of these core skills is an additional major benefit,” he said.
Word spread about the Skirmishing the Youth Project and events have also been conducted in Longreach (population 2,975) and Blackall (population 1,160).
Later the PCYC Cowra NSW also started a laser tag program.
The youth program was so successful it won the best regional program in the Child Protection Week Awards - Youth Participation.
The Skirmishing the Youth was also honored with a Highly Commended in the Premier’s Awards for Excellence in Public Service Delivery.
“The initiative is proving effective in engaging at-risk youth and has gained the full support of local businesses and the broader community,” Acting Assistant Commissioner Wright (now retired) said.
“The rate of juvenile offending in Charleville has fallen significantly since the program commenced.”
“The recognition of this initiative at the Premier’s Awards for Excellent is a fitting reward for the Charleville Police officers who have worked very hard in ensuring the success of the program.”
The Youth Program incorporates laser tag games that focus on:
The development of these core skills is an additional major benefit.
Partnerships with the local community and service providers were central to the success of the project. Local business Arrow Energy is supporting the program.
“The attraction of Laser Skirmish allows the drawing of a large group of youths to enable effective delivery of a specified message. This activity was specifically designed to incorporate behavioral management strategies to enable 'at-risk youths' to be put on behavioral management contracts that provide Laser Skirmish as a substantial reward,” said Sgt Ryan.
"In this game - there is no single player that wins - it is the team that ultimately achieves success or failure. The laser tag system has been formulated in such a way that it forces the participants to cooperate together to achieve the goals of the mission."
"All of the missions require communication, organization, and planning. The funny thing is that when participants play - they don't realize how much of these important aspects they use,” said Sgt Ryan.
“The other clearly identified benefits are health-related. At a time when parents can never seem to encourage children from the computer or TV - you will find children queuing, begging and pleading to be engaged in this activity. The most amazing aspect is that children don't realize they are exercising. After the first couple of minutes - you will even see adults diving for cover,” he said.
“It is not uncommon to find parents who join in - telling staff how they never realized how much exercise was actually involved. In most cases, it is not uncommon to find dads reliving playing army men with their son or daughter - barking out orders and pointing to and fro. (Moms normally get a big laugh out of it),” he said.
Sgt RYAN said, “An important aspect of what we have achieved is the laser tag equipment we use. After conducting a lot of research in this area we identified Battlefield Sports as a suitable provider for this unique laser tag equipment. After deploying it in weather extremes through the South West of Queensland, we were and still are impressed with the robustness and ease of use of the taggers. When we purchased the SATR equipment we have since found the continual development and upgrades to the product, have actually grown with us while we have delivered the program.”
As well as supplying laser tag equipment to several PCYCs, our sister business Laser Tag in a Box has rented equipment to more than 75 PCYC centers.
For more information about Skirmish the Youth, see the press release on Facebook.
To learn more about the laser tag programs offered by PCYC visit their website at https://www.pcyc.org.au/
Get the same package as these PCYCs with the Awesome Cobra + Battle Boxes.
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