Picked up from over on Gallomanor - V the volunteering ’super charity’ are rebranding and launching yet another campaign adding to the huge amount of money they must have already spent on glossy campaigns.

Apparently they’ve now decided that young people don’t think volunteering so instead they’re going to call it ‘doing favours’!

um does that sound anything like Millennium Volunteers?

“right volunteering is not cool - so lets say that cool things are volunteering”

“er but some of that stuff isn’t actually volunteering - I mean they’re just playing football or baby sitting their little brother”

“no, no, those things do benefit other people so really we can count it as volunteering can’t we?!”,

“er I suppose so but doesn’t that mean we haven’t really increased volunteering we’re just calling stuff they’re already doing something different?”

“well yes but at least we can write some impressive reports and keep the funding coming in….”

OK I’m maybe being over cynical - but it hard not to over such ridiculous wastes of funding. They may be right that ‘volunteering’ isn’t cool - but rebranding, giving it a new name still isn’t going to suddenly result in surges of young people running out to volunteer. Maybe if more effort had been given to developing more rounded programmes, that funding could have helped support young people to become genuinely more community minded. But instead this simple “get them volunteering and they’ll be good citizens” won’t work - it needs a cultural shift, not fancy films and marketing.

For all the money that has been spent they might have been better just giving every young person in England a holiday job - “here you go I’ll pay you £50 for doing something nice for somebody else each Sunday this month!” At least then young people would have benefited more than all those involved with putting these campaigns together.

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This made me smile - I called in to our local shop tonight. It was dark and as I got to the shop there was a gang of young people hanging around - some of them sat on a grass embankment next to the shop, a couple by the doorway and a couple around a motorcycle.

As I got close one of the young people dashed inside the shop and when I entered was running around it. As he passed me by he said “don’t worry he’ll be here in a  minute”, shortly after the shop assistant appeared and apologised because he’d been out the back clearing boxes. As I left the shop the lad that had gone in to find the assistant held the door open for me - I thanked him and left.

It made me smile because like most people on getting to the shop I wondered what they were all up to - of course most probably nothing at all - just hanging around where theres some light while a couple tinkered with the motorbike, and as it seemed looking out for the shop too.

It reminded me of the Buzz Off campaign against mosquito devices and the Downing Steet E-Petition which only got a pretty rubbish 149 supporters. Presumably the local shop here won’t be installing any anyway!

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I posted up a load of these a year ago but never realised a load more were released a month later. You can see the full list of short animations about the various articles for the UN Rights of the Child here

There’s a simplified version of what the articles are in this post. There’s the odd one I don’t really get (if not for the title!) as the message is a bit vague (like the one with the donkeys!!?!) or its been badly produced, but the majority are brilliant. I’m not sure ‘favourites’ seems appropriate given the topic but here’s a select few that I think are well produced.

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75% of young people involved in the UK Youth Parliament apparently believe the planet can only survive for another 50 years in its current state. (Taken from a survey held at their ‘annual sitting’.)

We’ve done bits of work with various factions of the UK Youth Parliament but I’ve never been involved with any of their annual sittings - I would expect though that given these are young people in a role to represent the views and concerns of other young people, that when they do meet to discuss such important issues they get the support of experts in the topics they discuss. So presumably when discussing environmental attitudes they were able to grill experts about what those risks are and to ask fundamental questions like is the planet really in danger? or is it that the planet will probably survive but the human race may not, and so on.

Assuming this is the case isn’t it a bit surprising that in the survey the person who apparently the UKYP members feel has the most power to influence young people regarding climate change is………………. David Beckham?!

Now in terms of media influence it may still be understandable to choose a high profile celebrity - but I can’t help but wonder whether theres a responsibility here for young people representing others to be able to take their inspiration from experts in the relevant fields - and to then inform other young people about who those experts are so that they base their decisions/opinions on credible information, not media puppets.

You can see more about the UKYP Annual Sitting on their website

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“You’re already involved” is the strapline of the Bebo Battlefront Campaign - a campaign designed to encourage young people to use social media for social change.

One of the campaigns up there is Ginger Lib - I picked up on this because its something Kirsty has (quite rightly) been campaigning for for many years.

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I touched on this in a previous post here where I mentioned a campaign a group we worked with about 3 years ago which involved young people lobbying Connexions to open at weekends and during evenings. As far as I’m aware the campaign wasn’t successful in their particular area.

In an article in this months Youth Work Now Michael Bracey wrote that Youth Workers should be prepared to work weekends. Her quotes from a recent Government Report that 91% of people said “it was important that youth facilities were open on Friday and Saturday evening”, compared to just 1% who feel its important they open on a Monday night.

Bracey goes on to mention some of the reasons given for not opening at weekends including that young people are out drinking, a lack of resources and the expense of operating a seven day service, he also suggests there’s another reason - that some Youth Workers just don’t want to work at weekends - claiming that very few will work beyond 5pm on a Friday.

I picked up on this again because of a comment on the CYP Now Forums in response to an article about research by the National Association of Clubs for Young People that youth clubs ‘help curb antisocial behaviour’ (well you’d kind of hope they would wouldn’t you?!) - but that aside, Barry Walsh says in the forum “certainly where I work this could be mentioned as we currently open once a week on a Tuesday… we haven’t ever opened on a Friday.. a day generally regarded as a no go day.. as the perception is that’s when young people are at their most rowdiest… drinking and smoking”.

In the courses we’ve organised over the years theres been more than a few occasions that groups have pulled out because they’ve failed to get staff prepared to work on residentials or at weekends. I was very surprised when we first started to run courses for Youth Workers to find that apparently the best time to run them was midweek - not because they were busy working with young people at weekends, but because they don’t work weekends. Well we ran most of them at weekends anyway because they were ran by young people who were at school during the week and I’m pleased that there were plenty of Youth Workers prepared to attend courses at weekends - though it has to be said attendance by professionally qualified workers was very low (most were in related professions or volunteer workers).

My own thinking when doing youth work was that working very late hours, working at weekends and regularly going on residentials was just the way it was and that was the price I happily paid in return for an interesting job. In return I got paid a mighty salary of £4,600 per annum for 3 years for what was supposed to be a 20 hour a week job (in reality more like 45).

What I’d really like to know is what are Youth Workers doing between the hours of 9am & 5pm, Monday to Friday? Is there really more valuable stuff to do during the day than there is from 7pm - midnight + Saturday & Sunday?

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Film with the young people from Mullaghmatt Youth House over in Monaghan, Ireland, who take us a on a tour of the local area and interview some local residents about local issues and their feelings about the youth house.

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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…)

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