3 training courses which were run back to back with young people from Donegal, Ireland
Tags: events, film, Films & Social Media, social media
I finally got round to submitting our response to the DCSF Consultation on ‘Youth Sector Support‘ and one of the questions raised an issue I’d considered a while back.
Participation is the current ‘in term’ (although I see ‘empowerment’ is making a come back!). But while I think youth participation is in principle a good thing, its not the be all & end all. I also think too much apparent participation is in fact minority participation - it uses a model of representation rather than effectively allowing any young person to be able to participate in an organisation or service. Representation is very useful - but only if those doing the representing are effectively representing the views and needs of others (and often this is questionable).
So how do you broaden participation so that young people who are not ‘represented’ are able to have an input? (more…)
Tags: adults, campaign, soft skills, youth work
Some more interviews with children involved with the Grace Orphan Project in Zomba, Malawi. Mussa (12) and Simple (13) are two of the nicest young people I’ve ever met - if they were in this country we’d have jumped at the chance to get them volunteering with us. As it is its probably more worthwhile that they’re talents are put to use to help the Grace project develop - lets hope they get the opportunities they will need to develop their education and stay involved….
Tags: Africa & Overseas, child rights, film, poverty, ya
Heres a short clip of an interview with one of the members of Donegal Youth Council, taken from unused footage from their training with us in January
Tags: film, politics, soft skills
Film from the recent training with Donegal Youth Council in Ireland
Tags: campaign, environment, events, film, Films & Social Media, politics, prejudice, social media, soft skills
Heres a film of some adults from all over the UK who took part in a training course in Nottingham. The training aims were to provide guidance, practical ideas and resources to the adults who work with young people in sport, to guide them along a pathway to participation, volunteering and leadership. undefined
Tags: activities, events, film, Films & Social Media, social media
The Final Research Report based on the ‘Apprentice Trainers’ involved with the Young Movers programme is now available.
The Apprentice Trainer Programme was our way of training up young people to deliver the training on our courses. The programme was never originally designed to be led by young people - our focus was to provide good training courses. We started by using the model used on the adult programmes at the National Communities Resource Centre which is to tender out and bring in external consultants and trainers. As we ran courses this way we also started to get an interest from people wanting to volunteer for courses - so we took some of these on and then eventually there came a point where I realised we should be making better use of the skills that volunteers had. So we did this bit by bit and then we got to a point where I got the most involved volunteers together and asked them if they thought they were capable of running courses themselves. A small group of us led a few courses and then finally we got (more…)
Tags: events, politics, res, Resources, soft skills, volunteering
The final version of the independent research report undertaken on the Young Movers programme is now available (copy attached at the bottom). I wrote a brief history of the Young Movers programme in a blog a few days ago.
The research was undertaken by the Institute of Political and Economical Governance and is in two parts - an overall report and a more focussed report on the Apprentice Trainer programme that trained up the young people who delivered the training on courses. YoMo evolved from the Young Movers programme and many of the young people that were Apprentice Trainers are still involved with us.
I’ve picked out some of the bits that I think are particularly interesting. Firstly that young people are willing to participate in their communities…..
“There was a willingness to get involved with community problems, just under nine in ten said they would like to be more
involved”
However they do view adults as a barrier to their potential participation:
“This included a lack of recognition of young volunteers, and a lack of opportunities to get involved locally. They also pointed to hostility and criticism of young people from adults. They felt that adults do not take young people’s views seriously, and did not genuinely listen. This was seen as a de-motivator for youth involvement, offering mixed messages to young people.”
And yet this is despite that young people feel (more…)
Tags: adults, age, events, res, Resources, soft skills, volunteering
Mike Amos-Simpson is the author of several resources designed to support young peoples personal development through participation in community activities.
Previously he designed and managed a national youth programme providing practical training to inspire young people living in areas of deprivation to organise community projects and activities.
Subscribe Feed (RSS)