The Brief
CoppaFeel! was founded in 2009 by Kris Hallenga and her twin sister Maren, after Kris was diagnosed with incurable (stage four/secondary) breast cancer at the age of 23. Kris was struck by the limited information available for young people, and so CoppaFeel! was born to ensure that all breast cancers are diagnosed early and accurately.
CoppaFeel!’s mission is simple: to get every 18-24 year old checking their chest monthly, and aware of the signs of breast cancer, so that if they notice something unusual they are empowered to contact their GP and advocate for themselves. They do this because, when diagnosed early, breast cancer treatments are more effective and survival rates are higher. Early detection can save lives.
Working closely with the charity, Participation People recognised the critical need for the CoppaFeel! brand to evolve with its audience, to allow for future-proofing for generations to come. All aspects of the charity needed to encompass the powerful heritage and spirit of which it is so firmly known for.
Having established a few key areas, we delivered a series of different workshops with the CoppaFeel! team to help them to create a youth engagement strategy and provide them with access to youth insights through our Young Consultants.
The Solution – Youth Engagement
As part of our partnership with CoppaFeel!, we worked with their Engagement and Inclusion team to design a bespoke training package in collaboration with our Young Consultants. These workshops introduced youth engagement to the whole organisation (including the Trustee Board) and were tailored to the needs of the charity and the respective departments which provided an accessible and hyper-relevant introduction to youth engagement for each team.
Three key priorities were determined for these workshops so that CoppaFeel! employees returned to their areas of work with confidence, positivity, and a clear plan to embed new approaches. They were:
Expanding Perspectives: CoppaFeel! staff broadened their perspectives by gaining insights into the experiences, challenges, and aspirations of different young people today.
Increasing Understanding: CoppaFeel! increased their understanding of the value of incorporating youth voices into decision-making processes and organisational practices.
Commitment to Action: CoppaFeel! left with a clear commitment to taking concrete steps towards integrating youth voices into their professional practice, driving positive change within their teams, and advocating for youth engagement at all levels.
Alongside the workshops, we also provided CoppaFeel! access to young people’s insights for ad hoc projects. The fundamental element to the project’s success was our co-creation approach. Through our Listening Labs service, we worked with a group of young people from across the UK to place audience insight and user testing at the heart of the projects. This youth engagement group consisted of 15 young people aged 18-24 from a range of diverse backgrounds and life experiences. We ensured that there was a range of breast cancer awareness levels within the group, with some having minimal to no knowledge.
In one of these projects, our young participants evaluated the effectiveness of health information on the CoppaFeel! website, assessing the breadth of information, as well as the user-friendliness of the site and how impactful they felt the language was. The CoppaFeel! team responded quickly to the feedback and made amends to their health information webpages on their website, alongside feedback from their Medical Advisory Group.
Outcomes
Following the workshops, the conversations, learnings, and takeaways from each team were used as the basis to develop CoppaFeel!’s new Youth Engagement Strategy which provides the framework and the guiding principles for the involvement of young people moving forward to ensure that their engagement continues to be meaningful, intentional, non-extractive and inclusive.
The youth engagement group who took part in this project gave unanimously positive feedback and shared how they valued the opportunity to contribute to the continued improvement of positive health outcomes.
Interested in how our youth engagement services could help your organisation future-proof your business strategy? Reach out to us today.
