By Fay Pretty | PeaceJam UK Coordinator & Youth Team Leader
With the amazing support of our GlobalGiving Donors, over September and October, we have been able to plan our first-ever PeaceJam Slam in Leeds that combined a day of mentor training with a day of inspiration, education and social action.
Held at the CATCH Youth Centre (https://www.catchleeds.org/) on Saturday 11th of November we implemented a programme filled with workshops, social action planning and small group mentoring sessions with the theme ‘Your World, Your Way’. The day aimed to build confidence and resilience to empower youth to make positive social change.
One 12-year-old boy said it was “really good. I have a little bit more confidence now on how to make a difference”.
During the day we also delivered hands-on mentor training to a number of university students from Bradford, Leeds Trinity and Leeds University while our youth were taking part in their own mentoring sessions. These students are now trained and ready to deliver Generation Change sessions across their local communities.
A 22-year-old mentor trainee said, “I have learned how to engage people in conversation through activities”.
The majority of our PeaceJam UK Youth Team were also in attendance. With feedback from our youth and community partners, we relaunched our Youth Team at the beginning of the academic year, combined with our original plans for a virtual club, to offer a year of mentorship and social action. We now have a team of 10 youth aged 14 to 25 years old from across the UK with some inspiring youth paving the way. For example:
A 13-year-old girl said, “I will try to start a new club that will talk about problems in the world”.
This was inspired by our Workshop led by a 15-year-old member of our youth team who runs a Peace and Humanitarian Club at his school. He talked about how to make negative headlines into positive headlines, as well as how to start your own Peace Club and write a successful letter-writing campaign. We love that the day could showcase the power of not only near-peer mentoring but peer-to-peer mentoring as well!
We could not have reached this point without the continued support of our GlobalGiving donors, thank you for making this possible.
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