Support Young Leaders Implement Sustainable Action

With the support of our GlobalGiving donors, we can announce a successful wrap-up of our FIRST Youth Leadership Team Year of mentoring, skills training, and social action! 

The Youth Leadership Team supports young people from September to September, adjacent to the academic year. This year, with your support, the Youth Leadership Team attended training days focusing on mentoring, fundraising, and social media content creation, all of which have helped them create and complete projects addressing issues they care about. These issue areas include animal rights, refugees, and nuclear disarmament. 

One Youth Team member’s social action project launched at our PeaceJam Winchester Conference on the 3rd of July. 

“I decided to do my campaign on nuclear disarmament because I think that nuclear weapons should be abolished. We live in a nuclear weapon state and have been taught that nuclear weapons keep us safe. This is a myth. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction, and they’re dangerous and harmful even before they’re used: during production, storage and maintenance.

A social action campaign combines EDUCATION with ACTION. I don’t agree with the way we’re educated to think that nuclear weapons are necessary for defence or peace: they’re NOT moral, logical or safe. So, I created a fact sheet and put it into log books for the conference to re-educate people on nuclear weapons and help them unlearn some of the myths we’re taught. I also wanted to help promote the TPNW, the treaty that made these horrific weapons illegal.”

The project's action element was simple and utilised the log books that the Youth Team had created as space for reflection during the conference and as a guidebook to taking action after the event. Inside the log book, as well as the nuclear weapons fact sheet produced by Matty, was the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament logo. Attendees were encouraged to decorate that logo and post a picture of it using the hashtag #TPNWYouthVoices. A quick, accessible, creative way to show that young people do care about nuclear disarmament and to help spread awareness of the landmark treaty, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. 

The Conference, which the Youth Team themed “Our World, Our Way” embodied the empowering community aspect of PeaceJam conferences. It brought together our mentors to run near-peer small family group mentoring sessions with our students, workshops and issue area experts to run round table discussions. Students came away from the day, empowered to create change, having already taken part in an example project and having been able to identify their own communities and the issues they want to address around them. 

The Youth Leadership Team can already be seen to be nurturing and mentoring the next wave of changemakers and future leaders. 

When asked “What would you say to another young person interested in joining the Youth Team next year?”, our current team responded with:

“The youth team is a brilliant opportunity to learn new skills, meet incredible people, and make a difference to issues you care about.”

“Do it for the leadership, public-speaking and confidence abilities you will gain, along with the properly good vibe.”

With your support, we are so excited to welcome new Youth Team applications in September in preparation for a new cohort of members for the next academic year. Additionally, several Youth Team members from this year will be returning to continue developing their projects and youth leadership skills, as well as fulfilling mentorship roles to support new members. 

We can not wait to see this project develop further, thank you for making it possible!

Links:

• Youth Team Application Form

• PeaceJam Log Books 2024 (PDF)
  
• Youth Team Flyer (PDF)