Youth Development in Local Communities
Develop better services for young people in your local community based on a true understanding of what young people really want.
What is youth development? To us, it’s about connecting with young people, meeting them on their level, working out their unique talents and skills and building on them.
Plus, it’s a key factor for the public sector that want to engage with young people and advocate children’s rights. Participation People frequently work with both the youth voluntary and public sectors to make sure their strategies are relevant to the next generation.
Positive youth development within their local community empowers young people to aspire to reach their full potential. This, in turn, benefits the future of their community as a whole, with active citizenship leading to the co-creation of better facilities and employment opportunities.
Participation People have several tried-and-tested methods for reaching the young people you want to speak to in your area and can draw on this expertise to help you identify and develop a youth development strategy and implementation plan.
Our Experience
We’ve worked with almost 30 Local Authorities across the UK to develop youth programmes. This included our Movement to Work project, commissioned by the West Midlands Combined Authority Jobs and Skills Academy. We helped them to form a Youth Steering and Scrutiny Group for the project, working to implement strategies to facilitate employment pathways for young people. The team of young people, recruited, trained and supported by Participation People, aimed to ensure that decision-makers, including local businesses, were engaging with and listening to young people.
Gillian Churchill, CEO of Movement to Work surmised that the young people “had been integral to developing the programme” and that by sharing their “experiences of being a young person in the West Midlands, openly and honestly… they had challenged the norm, suggested new and more creative ways of doing things and brought a fresh perspective”.
We also collaborated with The London Borough of Hounslow to train a diverse group of Young Facilitators to facilitate engagement workshops promoting community cohesion and safety for young people. Through a series of workshops over seven months, our team of Young Facilitators worked alongside key decision-makers to co-produce a People and Places of Safety Map for education providers, youth groups and the council to share and highlight good community cohesion practices. The final project report was presented to London Borough of Hounslow Community Partnership Unit and ideas for community activities raised at the workshops subsequently became a key consideration for further funding.
Children’s Rights
Children’s Rights and effective safeguarding are always our central concern. Our work is built from Article 12 of the United Nations Convention Rights of a Child – with Lundy’s model of Child Participation providing the framework and quality assurance to our practice.
Space – We make sure we provide safe, open and inclusive spaces for young people to form and express their voices.
Voice – This gives us the optimum conditions to dig under the surface, moving beyond surveys and focus groups to listen to their voices, thoughts and perspectives on services.
Audience – We are known for our work when getting decision makers and policy shapers ready to listen, helping them listen in different modes – listen to understand young people’s thoughts, perspectives and at times, trauma and then getting ready to act, collaboratively with young people.
Setting the scene for SPACE, helping young people form and express their VOICE and getting the right AUDIENCE in the right place at the right time, ready to listen creates the perfect conditions for INFLUENCE.
Participation People are famous for our co-production events, bringing both young people with lived and living experiences of services and decision makers together to carve a way forward, as partners to curate and develop a positive future for all.
Why Use Participation People
We can help you identify young people in your area with several tools we can activate to recruit on your behalf. Our expert team will contact all the applicants for an initial screening interview. Those selected will be trained if necessary.
- A recruitment campaign call for 500 young people to respond to a Youth-Led Research project led to just over 4,500 responses in 6 weeks!
- We’ve successfully recruited 18 diverse teams of 20 – 25 young people with lived or living experience of services for the public sector in the last 12 months
- We also have an average of 89% young people retention rate
- We’re also subject area experts in Children’s rights and thought leaders on UNCRC’s Article 12 and can advise how to ensure these are met within your community.
Youth Development Training
We have a range of online courses that can be used to upskill your team and teach you how to engage with young people, and each course varies depending on your level of experience. We run them regularly and you can sign up on our website. If you’re unsure of which course would be best for you then speak to us and we can help recommend the best course to join.
Alternatively, we offer bespoke training for you and your team tailored to your specific objectives. We plan creative, interactive sessions led by our experts and young people that are delivered on-site. Our team of professional trainers travel to you to conduct your personalised session on-site. Read how we conducted advanced executive coaching, consultancy and mentoring for 2-3 Degrees here.
“As an organisation that works with lots of young people, the Children’s Commissioner’s team needs to have a good handle on the latest digital communication strategies and techniques. Participation People really helped us to up our game in this respect, giving us tons of new ideas and know-how. Their commitment to involving a broad range of young people in each of their training modules ensured that sessions were always fresh, relevant and, above all, fun. RECOMMEND!”
-Office of the Jersey Children’s Commissioner