By Fay Pretty | PeaceJam UK Coordinator & Youth Team Leader
Our new project ‘Empower 10,000 UK Youth to Change the World!’ is now LIVE! Check out our latest report below.
We are so excited to announce that with the support of our GlobalGiving donors, our new ‘Be the Change!’ programme has hit the ground running. Over the last four months, PeaceJam UK has been facilitating our ‘Be the Change!’ programme at Manchester Communication Academy and working with Year 11 students to devise and run a social change project of their choosing.
Witnessing the impact of consistent social media exposure on their peers and younger children in their community, the group were passionate about educating others on the negative effects of social media and promoting thoughtful interactions in online spaces. Through a series of PeaceJam-facilitated workshops and discussions around how to take action, they decided that for the project to be sustainable it could not aim to primarily stop people using social media but instead educate on how it can be used positively, and potentially, in moderation.
Launched on the 21st of February, at the PeaceJam Manchester Slam, the students have created an acronym for being BRAVE online that encourages users to be thoughtful, kind and careful and are asking people to use the hashtag, #BeMCABrave, when they post after considering this acronym and applying what they have learnt.
BRAVE:
Developing their confidence and communication skills, the students presented their project to all participants at the Slam and then joined our Q&A panel of social action experts to share their experiences and inspire other youth to take action. Additionally, they created a three-page informational insert in our log books for the event, for youth to take home and research further.
As a result of their work, a fourteen-year-old male, when asked what he would take back to his school/community, answered I will “spend less time on social media.” Likewise, a fifteen-year-old male said, “I will be more thoughtful about how I use social media to connect and interact with others”.
A fifteen-year-old female agreed strongly that attending the slam inspired her to make positive changes in herself, her community and the world. This included being committed to being a peacemaker, learning how to problem solve without resorting to violence and feeling able to tackle big issues and keep going. When asked why she said “the panel’s passion about the topic which has given me the motivation.”
Going forward they aim to run educational presentations to their peers, younger students and parents around online awareness and social media use while encouraging the use of the acronym going forwards and the hashtag to spread awareness. To measure their impact, they plan to collect data through the use of surveys and share their findings with the community to inspire further change.
As part of our Manchester Slam, we were also able to run mentor training with local university students and, with your support, we can now expand our ‘Be the Change!’ programme in the next year to schools in the wider area including Sharples High School and Smithills School in Bolton.
This is just the start and we are so excited to see this programme grow across the UK. We could not have kickstarted this project without the support of our GlobalGiving donors, thank you for making this possible.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
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