Some of us have been Viva! members for a long time. You can join at 11 and you can stay until you are 30, or you can leave earlier if you want. Then if you want you can become a volunteer in the project.

Viva! started in 1992 and worked in the Rhondda Valley. There were about thirty members and we had some fun setting up the first programmed of activities. We had money from the Lottery and we won several Youth Excellence Awards!In 2000 we had a new manager and her job was to make Viva! bigger so that it spready right across Rhondda Cynon Taff. We were nervous about this at first, but it has been great having more members across the valleys and now have many new and different activities.

Several of us have "Duke of Edinburgh Awards", and we get to go to national events like the Welsh Assembly. We also helped to appoint the first Children's Commissioner in Wales, and we get involved with consultation with Children In Wales and Learning Disability Wales.

Some of us are involved in the new ROOTS (raising our opportunities to say) forum held in the Viva! office once a month. Young people from all across Rhondda Cynon Taff can take part in the form: you don't have to be a Viva! member. As part of this group you can get involved in visits to other organisations to look at their work, we have also carried out presentations to important people in the University of Glamorgan. We are now looking to produce a newsletter with some of the issues we face on a daily basis. So if you are interested come along, we have lots of fun too! We have lots of exiting ideas that we want to use to plan for the future and the one thing we always know is that, as long as Viva! is still here we can do anything that able-bodied people can do and more. We look forward to new adventures and achievements over the next few years!