I’ve just listened to Tim Davies talking about the presentation he & Sarah Schulman gave based on their research into a Positive Youth Development model. Looking at the slides & listening to Tim took me back years ago to when I first started developing what has now become YoMo.

A question I sometimes get asked is why did I decide to work with young people? The honest answer is I didn’t particularly - my background is in sports - I took a youth development job as temporary work & just kept going - so the more interesting question is why did I keep on going?

I started my work with young people on an estate in Worcester at a typical local youth club - very small attendance and dominated by the local ‘bad’ kids. The club was supported by volunteers and I observed it for a few weeks and then decided to close it down and start afresh. My reasoning for this was that I didn’t think it was right that on an estate of 5000 properties only 13 young people attended the youth club - and I felt that both the young people and volunteers attending it were preventing others from joining through their behaviour and reputation.

So starting afresh I went out to talk to young people in the area and asked them what sort of activities & services they would like. There were various suggestions but the one with most enthusiasm was an idea to set up regular discos. At one of the citywide youth worker meetings I updated everyone on this and was immediately shouted down - “you should be working with the ‘bad’ young people - they’re the ones that need us”, “disco’s aren’t youth work”, “discos will only cause problems” & so on. The bottom line was that nobody (more…)

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Film from the training with Bournville Village Trust. Photos are also on Flickr. Looks like there will be a lot of busy young people in Birmingham!!

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Karibu means ‘welcome’ in Swahili. I don’t know its exact meaning in Chichewa (Malawian language), but when one of the staff at the school in Zomba said Karibu I was pretty sure he was inviting me over to share their meal (lets hope so because thats what I did!).

We’d just come out of the pool and it was dark (in Malawi it turns pitch black so quickly its almost like the lights have been turned off) - so just out of the pool in the darkness, and I can see two men and one calls over “karibu”. So over I go, and I see they have a plate of nsima and a bowl of beans.

Nsima is a bit like a thick porridge or loose mashed potatoe, its a mix made from maize which is the staple food of Malawi. I’d had nsima before - its not very exciting - you roll a small (more…)

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In ‘A Practical Approach to Youth Participation’ I included a chapter called the ‘Pathway to Participation’. I’ve adapted it and attached a pdf here. I started thinking about this again after seeing an appeal for young people to sit on an ‘advisory group’, and this got me thinking about the difference between a developmental approach to involving young people progressively and just recruiting young people ’straight to the top’.

Next month we’re doing some work with Streetgames. They’re exploring how to support young people from taking part in sporting activities with them through to becoming involved at a strategic level with the organisation. When we originally met up to discuss this, we spoke about the pathway and the need to have it in place prior to our training with them. The ‘pathway’ is the ‘journey’ that young people are able to take through the organisation - its how young people are able to progress from their initial involvement and then on to whatever positions of responsibility/involvement the organisation can offer them.

To use a sports organisation as an example this might be something like: (more…)

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Fenny is one of the children involved with the Grace Orphan Project and is the first of the children who kindly agreed to do an interview with us last month.

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We started this blog less than a year ago last July. It wasn’t our first attempt - we ran one for a short while before going to Tanzania in 2005 but it never really took off. I for one just never ‘got into it’ and I didn’t much see the point. I knew what we were doing back then would be interesting but I wasn’t sure it was interesting enough to other people to bother writing about (after all who reads blogs?!).

About 2 years ago we then started to develop an online volunteer network for young people involved with the programme we used to run. From this I became much more interested in the use of online networking and I searched (more…)

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Having been up all night mostly cursing our DVD copying facilities I decided to take the day off today which gave me chance to finish off the report we promised to provide the Grace Orphan & Disabled Care Group in Malawi following our recent visit out to them.

While out there we did a series of film interviews with some of the children which we’ll try & get online soon. These along with some of the group development training and general activity days helped us to get a much deeper understanding of both the children and the group than we gained last year.

The group itself is now meeting on its own land which has been fenced off. This is a huge step forward from last year when the group were meeting under a tree next to somebodys house! They still have a long way to go though and much like the name of their Manager they need to travel step by step’ (Ernest Pondeponde is the Manager - ponde ponde means step by step!), (the neighbouring town is called Pondebwino - step carefully!).

Just like any community group in the UK the group has a committee, and much like (more…)

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Short film showing the candidates speeches for the Cheshire Youth Parliament West Region.

(more…)

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