Participation Works

claireg — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 16:43:50 +0100

Participation Works- Supporting the Third Sector to Develop Participation

Participation Works is a consortium of organizations committed to children and young people’s participation. We offer support to third sector organisations, enabling them to effectively involve children young people in the development, delivery and evaluation of services, which affect their lives.

PWNE
The Participation Works Network for England (PWNE) exists to provide opportunities for adults for whom participation is part of their daily work, to network, share new ideas and learn more about the participation landscape.

Membership is free and benefits include fortnightly ebulletins to keep you up to date with the latest news, events, policy and opportunities around children and young people’s participation in decision making. Members can also search the network database to get in contact with and share knowledge with other participation workers.

Online Gateway
Our Gateway website also contains up to date news stories, events and high quality resources relevant to the world of children and young people’s participation

Training
We offer training to support organisations to develop participation. Our training courses are FREE to Voluntary, Community and Faith organisations.

Building a Culture of Participation explores how an organisation’s culture can be established to support children and young people’s active and meaningful participation across the organisation. It is based on developing skills and knowledge in participation, involving self and organisational analysis as well as action planning. This course may lead on to gaining one to one advice and support from an approved Participation Works consultant.

Ready Steady Change is a comprehensive set of training and tools to build your skills and knowledge in increasing children and young people’s effective participation in decision-making. Focusing on “values, change and action”, Ready Steady Change approaches participation from a children’s rights framework and is suitable for professionals in a variety of settings as well as policy makers.

Visit www.participationworks.org.uk to find out more.

Feedback from day 2 working groups: Priorities for making a positive contribution

tim — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 12:07:12 +0100

What are the key priorities for action?

Campaigning

Need focused effort to let young people know the benefits of volunteering
Need more celebrations that involve young people and parents
Need clearer support from government (not all departments seem onside)
Need more visible champions – government, industry, young people (peer to peer), educationalists
Need to raise the currency of volunteering with politicians
Volunteering works at a whole range of levels

Policy (national and local)

Compulsion issue needs proper informed national debate
Need guidance for organisations that don’t yet involve young volunteers
Start with understanding volunteers’ contribution to inclusion / take social action approach
Recognise the importance of volunteering as a route to higher education

Practice

Progression and accreditation remain hot topics:
Qualifications and awards
Accreditation – OCN etc
Recognition = local and national certificates
Must get the progression right between non-formal and the formal – it’s two way
Role of supportive adults is critical
Opportunities for young people and parents (or other older people) to volunteer together.

Spending

Need comprehensive systems and structures that support young people / signpost to opportunities / challenge organisations
Need to secure longer term funding
Organisations are well up for the new challenges of increased accountability

Youth Summit Live: Summary

tim — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 12:26:10 +0100

The Youth Summit has been a great success for all those who attended, bringing together practitioners, policy makers and young people to discuss the key issues affecting the implementation of the Government’s ten-year strategy for children and young people. A wealth of ideas, debate and dialogue were generated, the most relevant of which have been captured as video interviews, podcasts, powerpoints and transcripts downloadable from this website. We will ensure it informs our work as we move forward and hope you find it valuable as well.

Throughout the Summit we were recording workshops and plenary sessions through Youth Summit Live. Below are links to some of the key posts in each theme.

Staying Safe

Summary workshop notes from day 1: assessment of the challenges and a full list of day 1 workshop notes give an overview of the staying safe topics covered. The workshop was led by young people from Corby using an attitude finder activity
Discussions of the harm caused Mosquito devices played a big part in the workshop, as the young people from Corby tell is in this video interview and as a workshop participant reflects in this one.
Workshop notes from day 2: priorities for action give a sense of the issues that participants wanted to take forward.
Darshna from Churchfield Primary School also used the blogging feature on Youth Summit Live to offer an imagined advice column to young people on issues of bullying.

Being Healthy

The summary workshop notes from day 1: assessment of the challenges in health give an overview of where we are falling short for young people, with all the different issues identified covered in this post.
Workshop notes from day 2: priorities for action gives a wide-ranging list of priorities from the health workshops, focussing in particular on funding and investment, better sex and relationship education, and improved training and sharing of good practise.
A what's changed example and two videos from the Maypole centre help explore some good practise sharing
Plus - we captured the launch of Youth Access's new resources on commissioning mental health services for young people

Enjoying and Achieving

The workshop notes from day 1: assessment of the challenges build up a clear picture of where change is needed.
Young people from NACRO Newcastle who led these workshops put enjoying and achievement into practise whilst at the summit - by making the most of their London visit and working hard to build a presentation overnight including their photos from around the city that fed into day 2.
The workshop notes from day 2: priorities for action identifies a range of campaigning, spending, policy and practise changes required.
A presentation from Actions Speak Louder highly commended project Rolling Base

Having Economic Wellbeing

The workshop notes from day 1: assessment of the challenges set out some serious topics for discussion on day 2.
But as the woorkshop notes from day 2: priorities for action show - the group generated practical forward planning ideas and shared examples of where action to ensure young people economic wellbeing can work.
We also capture Anthony Lawton's three tests for good housing through Bill's blogging and a discussion has developed on this blog post about gangs placed in the economic wellbeing category.

Making a positive contribution

The making a positive contribution workshop notes from day 1: give a wider ranging assessment of the challenges, added to by points from the young volunteers helping lead the session
The notes from day 2 with priorities are here. The group had a particularly interesting set of discussions about compulsory volunteering.
Mike from Yomo, watching Youth Summit Live whilst working in Ireland, shared some background resources that might be useful for organisations exploring young peoples volunteering and participation.

Plus - outside the core themes of the Youth Summit we had lots of activity on Youth Summit Live. This poem started of a wave of creativity, surfed by Barney from conference organisers NSA with this poetic input. Holly Hill proved to be star blogger, regularly dropping into the media centre to share her reflections. Plus - Tom Wylie's suggestion that there be a national Youth Board sparked a lot of discussion, including an online poll and a couple of video interviews.

Where next for Youth Summit Live?

The Youth Summit Live website will continue to be available and open for contributions for another couple of weeks. After that, we'll pause the ability to add information - but will keep it available so that practioners, policy makers and young people alike can share the collected wisdom and insights of all Youth Summit Live contributors.

The National Youth Agency, supported by Practical Participation is starting a deeper exploration of how methods like this can help us to communicate with and deepen our dialogue with young people and other NYA stakeholder alike. We'd welcome your continued comments, reflections and input.

The Youth Summit Live model

Youth Summit Live was concieved, designed, developed and run in just under a fortnight by Tim Davies of Practical Participation, working with the organising team for Youth Summit live from the National Youth Agency and Neil Stuarts Associates. It was championed and supported by Bill Badham. The Roving Reporters team made the media happen by roving through the Youth Summit gathering photos, reports and more. If you have any feedback about Youth Summit Live; you're interested in exploring how a Youth Summit Live style model could work at an event you are running; or you are interested in wider explorations of how new media can work for your organisation or project, please do contact tim@practicalparticipation.co.uk.

Parmjit Dhanda MP's Speech

tim — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 11:07:45 +0100

Web Link

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/speeches/search_detail.cfm?ID=650

Video

Young People in Malawi - Africa!

masyomo — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 19:25:13 +0100

The young people involved in supporting this project became involved by volunteering after they had attended courses themselves. They're from a broad range of backgrounds from different areas of the UK & Ireland.

Our work in Africa has largely been about a different kind of challenge for the young people that volunteer with us to deliver our training. In the UK we work with many of the "most deprived" areas and often hear about where communities we work with 'rank' on the indices of deprivation etc. Our volunteers are from these same areas - so this is a separate challenge working with people in 'absolute poverty'.

The average life expectancy in Malawi is just 36! It is by all measures one of the poorest countries in the world. And yet in the Zomba region we worked in two young men - Ernest & Giles are trying to make a difference. We're supporting them for at least the next 3 years because if people can make a difference in those circumstances they definitely can over here!

In this film Ernest talks a little about the Grace Orphan & Disabled Care Group and their hopes for the future. You can read more about the programme on the YoMo website at www.yomo.co.uk - just click on the link on the front page. You can also send donations by sms text message by texting 'YOMO' to 82070

If you'd like more info please use the forum on the YoMo site.

Resources for Youth Participation

masyomo — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 19:12:55 +0100

We're now taking orders for our free catalogue featuring our unique set of resources for youth participation and peer education. Order them online through the YoMo website at www.yomo.co.uk or email info@yomo.co.uk

In October we'll be running a networking event for practitioners and young people involved in supporting young peoples participation, citizenship and peer education.

This will be a 2 day event on the 25th & 26th October - places are free for participants that agree to share a resource or run a workshop. Will also include a 'speed networking' session and information about our work supporting a group in Malawi, Africa working with orphaned children.

To ensure you get more information sign up to the YoMo mailing list on the YoMo website (link for the mailing list is at the bottom of the page). If you get confused send us an email! You are very welcome to come to this event and promote your project for free! Thats what its all about!!

Roving Reporters - Newsletter

tim — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 11:50:52 +0100

The Roving Reporters were up till late last night creating an overnight newsletter to give a picture of the whole event.

Get your copy here (PDF).

Full notes from workshop 3... making a positive contribution

tim — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 18:37:50 +0100

Web Link

Video

Notes from the workshop.... (Making a positive contribution)

tim — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 18:19:38 +0100

What is young people's experience?

What needs to be changed or put in place?

How to replicate the success of projects like YouthAID across London / England
How to change the image of volunteering to engage ‘hard to reach’ young people
How to let local and national government know more about these projects
Ensuring young people gain personally from volunteering (personal not financial)
Highlighting the benefits (skills, activities of interest to the individual, chance to meet people, certificates etc)
How to encourage young people to spread the message to others – they are the most convincing advocates
Recruit a friend campaign?
Talking to young people that are not volunteering about volunteers experiences!
Whether volunteering should become compulsory for young people as part of their personal development…
Understanding young people’s motivation for volunteering is critical – could compulsory elements be included or would this undermine involvement?
What should young people do after their education is finished at 16 – stay on? volunteer? Undertake National service?…
How to recognise and celebrate young people’s achievements in the community
How to challenge negative perceptions and change peoples’ views?
How do we get more young people volunteering - making voluntary opportunities more appealing so more young people will be interested
What support structures and resources are there out there? For young people / for organisations wanting to involve young people?
Where are the progression routes for young volunteers?

Where are we falling short for children and young people?

Extra Evidence Online (optional)

Why are we falling short?

Extra Evidence Online (optional)

Vox Pops after open space session

tim — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:42:10 +0100

Steve Moore from Channel 4 led an open spaces session at today's Youth Summit - and afterwards DK captured some of the ideas that have come up...