North Belfast youth club at risk of closure due to funding shortfall

North Belfast youth club at risk of closure due to funding shortfall "We are not going to be staying quiet, we are going to put up a fight and make sure our doors stay open for years to come" 15:57, 20 Jan 2026 A youth club in North Belfast is worried about its future as a funding shortfall is making it more difficult to operate. ‌ Marrowbone Youth Club is located in the Oldpark area , and has over 250 children registered to attend, with around 70 attending per night. The youth club is open four nights a week, including their Friday Midnight Club for older teens. ‌ The club relies heavily on volunteers to keep its doors open, and has recently been rejected for core funding from the Education Authority for the sixth year in a row. ‌ : : Speaking to , senior youth worker Shannen O'Connor said they "won't go without a fight." The youth club are launching an online petition, as well as going door-to-door in the local area, and are planning to bring the fight to Stormont . She said: "We try to go above and beyond for our community, we make sure everything is youth and community-led. We fought for our new building - which we got in 2014 - for years. "It's just getting more and more difficult, and I understand budgets are tight, but something needs to be done. We are smack bang on the interface, in the middle of a deprived area, working with vulnerable young people. ‌ "Marrowbone Youth Club is a safe space for hundreds of young people in the Oldpark, and when this kind of safe space is closed, the young people don't close with it. The young people tend to start causing issues and move onto the streets, which we don't want to see happen, we don't want to see that rise in anti-social behaviour. "We need to make sure our doors are open and stay open, it's critical our community comes together with our young people to speak out. We are not going to be staying quiet this time around, we are going to put up a fight and make sure our doors stay open for years to come." ‌ Shannen said Marrowbone Youth Club provides a vital service to young people in a deprived area on a prominent interface. In the weeks the club has been forced to close, there has been a rise in anti-social behaviour locally. The youth worker fears this would only heighten if the club was forced to close its doors. She said: "I've had to close our doors for three weeks now, we've noticed a rise in anti-social behaviour in the Court area with kids coming out on their electric scooters and going mad on the road. I'm getting beyond the breaking point at the moment. "I'm a big advocate for youth-led projects, I always try to get our young people's opinion on what they want to do. If I was to turn around and tell them while our doors are closed, go to a different youth club, they wouldn't go. ‌ "We held a community meeting and the majority of our older kids came to it, and were asking what they can do to help. They're very keen to get involved and help out." A spokesperson for the Education Authority said: "An established and transparent process is in place for voluntary sector organisations to apply for funding to deliver youth services based on assessed need. Organisations are assessed against published assessment criteria and funding is awarded to successful applicants accordingly. "The EA can confirm that all awards released in North Belfast have applicants who have progressed to the next stage of the process. Article continues below "Any youth organisation that did not progress to the next stage of the application process has been offered a meeting with their local Funding and Assurance Officer to review their application and support future submissions." For all the latest news, visit the homepage here and sign up to our daily newsletter .