Education United Kingdom Project #35100

Create 4,000 UK Young Leaders from Deprived Areas

by PeaceJam UK

Project Report | Apr 4, 2022
Near-peer power - young supporting younger

By Caroline Millman | Chairman, PeaceJam UK

With many thanks, as ever, to our generous GlobalGiving donors for their support, we continue to develop our team of “near peer” facilitators/mentors to work with schools and youth groups delivering our Generation Change workshops.

As we approach the Easter holidays we have less activity with schools at the moment, but it is anticipated that we shall be able to do some “in person” workshops in the Summer Term. We continue to consult our Teacher Advisory Group, and encourage our PeaceJam UK Youth Leadership Team to guide our current work and the theme and content of our PeaceJam UK Youth Leadership Conference that will be taking place over the weekend of 12 and 13 November 2022 at the University of Winchester.

We shall have more news in our next update. Thank you again for your generosity and continued support.

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Dec 6, 2021
Near-peer power - young supporting younger

By Caroline Millman | Chairman, PeaceJam UK

Near-peer power - young supporting younger
By Caroline Millman - Chairman, PeaceJam UK

Thanks to the generosity of our GlobalGiving donors some of our team of trained, young professionals and University students were able to deliver one aspect of our Generation Change project to small groups of teenagers from the UK, Greece and Romania at our Virtual Slam on Saturday 13 November in their Family Group discussions.

The theme for this event was "Find your voice after lockdown - what matters to me now?". This certainly proved to be a very powerful theme and the event was a great demonstration of the power of our "near-peer" experience. The feedback from the teenagers who attended was impressive and heart warming. Here are some examples:

"It made us realise that we do have a voice, in everything be it challenging those around us to challenging companies and corporations, even just from holding back one pound or frankly by just being kind to one another- we all can make a difference be it one day for one person."

"Inspiring doesn't even begin to cover it!"

"It was honestly amazing. I learned so much and it really made me think about life and my actions and mentality towards it."

"I would do it again most definitely. It makes me feel extremely powerful as an individual and as a student and quite frankly a child it sometimes feels as if we have no power in are communities and the world. This really changed the way I viewed what I was capable of as only a 14 year old. Thank you for the opportunity to join I’m very grateful and I’m currently trying to incorporate all the thing we discussed in my life"

And, we are attaching a copy of the Word Cloud that was made at the Slam as a result of the question, "What matters to me now?". Have a look at what matters to these teenagers now.

Thank you so much for your continued generosity and support, it is really making a difference to young people. We look forward to sharing more updates during the remainder of this academic year.

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Jul 28, 2021
Near-peer power - young supporting younger

By Caroline Millman | Chairman, PeaceJam UK

With the support of GlobalGiving, our “Generation Change” project is enabling us to reach more young people via their schools and youth groups, and we already have some bookings for workshops during the Autumn Term.

This slightly different approach is even more focussed on supporting the development of young people, particularly those who are disadvantaged or disaffected. We are challenging the current narrative about young people, suggesting that they have fallen behind and will never catch up. It completely misses the resilience and flexibility that young people have shown over the last year and ignores their real potential.

We have consulted with teenagers, university students and people in their mid-twenties, from completely different settings and backgrounds about their experiences and feelings during and post ‘lockdown”. This has given us the opportunity to develop a programme of workshops that will enable these young people to think more positively about their futures, appreciate the abilities they have, take pride in their achievements and consider different paths to success.

A very powerful aspect of these workshops lies in them being developed and delivered by members of the PeaceJam UK and the PeaceJam Europe Youth Leadership Teams. A small group of these two teams has worked hard on putting together some fun, interactive activities, and sets of questions that engage, enthuse and enable. More members of these teams as well as some students from Bradford University have now been trained to deliver the workshops and the trial sessions have given us yet another indication of how successful this “near peer” experience can be.

At the moment the workshops are being delivered virtually using either Zoom or MS Teams, but it is hoped that we shall be able to visit schools from January 2022.

We are working towards our target of training 60 mentors and reaching more than 4,000 young people over the next academic year. We are extremely grateful for the donations that we receive through GlobalGiving that are allowing us to give more and more young people better futures for themselves and those around them. Thank you so much for your generosity and support, and we look forward to sharing more updates during the year.

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