By Fay Pretty | PeaceJam UK Coordinator
With the support of our GlobalGiving donors, our youth are taking action this summer, applying their leadership skills to community events, project work and their own summer plans.
In June, we held our first ever Romsey Slam, a one day conference consisting of near-peer mentoring sessions, Q&A panels, workshops and social action presentations. Together, with the students at The Romsey School and the Youth Leadership Team, our youth decided the theme of the conference and the topic of the workshops, as well as working over the Summer Term to design social action projects and take action in their community.
The students identified increasing local division, especially after the media coverage of a knife crime case that took place in the nearby city of Southampton. Discussions on knife crime, mental health and challenging stereotypes were all fed back to the Youth Leadership Team who decided the theme should focus on ‘Creating Communities’.
Ibby, a Year 11 student, and Chloe, a recent PHD graduate, joined the Q&A panel from our Youth Leadership Team. Ibby moderated the panel, his first time applying his public speaking and debate skills in this way and showcased contagious enthusiasm and thoughtful leadership in his engagement of the youth participants and regularly checked in that everyone could understand any new language or jargon that came up in conversation. Additionally, Chloe was inspired to share her experiences as a hidden disability advocate and campaigner and as well as speaking, ran a workshop with participants on the day.
Showcasing further youth action on the conference, a group of experienced mentors and Youth Team Leaders met in the lead up to the Slam to plan engaging Family Group activities, which are our small group near-peer mentoring sessions. They incorporated exciting facilitation tools like Lego to physically build communities with participants and they were then able to explore:
From there our PeaceJammers were able to reflect in safe spaces how to take what they learned over the conference and develop into action using our log books and resources. This would not have been possible without the support of our GlobalGiving donors.
Our youth continue to take action over the summer holidays! After our successful Youth Leadership Training Weekend in Bradford in February, participants asked for summer internship opportunities and now we have two groups of youth interns.
Our Social Media Youth Intern Team is developing collaboration tools and learning copywriting and graphic design skills. Meeting regularly to discuss ideas and ensure our social media is youth led and representative of all we do.
Likewise, our Event Management Youth Intern Team are working together to develop an online event for young people to coincide with the International Day of Peace on September 21, meeting weekly to design the theme and programme, as well as find speakers and workshop facilitators where appropriate. When asked what they hope to see and achieve from a peace youth event one intern responded:
“Personally, I think that the first thing I would like to see is youth connection, I feel that a lot of young people care about the same things and are affected by the same issues, but it's hard to find a unifying voice and mission at times, and so having workshops that make people realise that we often have similar passions than not is important, as a large component of actively making positive change in ourselves and our communities is working together, and building a community of people committed to the same cause (although you don't have to agree on everything)!” 17 year old female.
We are reaching the end of our third Youth Leadership Team year and cohort but despite this year being our biggest year yet, with your support, we are so excited to continue to grow and champion our inspiring community of young leaders from across the UK.
By Fay Pretty | PeaceJam UK Coordinator
By Fay Pretty | PeaceJam UK Coordinator
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