On 7 November 2008, Participation Works was ‘taken over’ by 8 young people aged 10-22 as part of 11 Million’s Takeover Day and the National Youth Agency’s National Youth Week promoting the voice and influence of young people.
In the run up to the day, PW’s EAR (the young people’s advisory group for the Participation Works programme) were involved in supporting the planning of the day and advising on the recruitment strategy. Members of the Participation Works team were asked to put forward specific challenges in their area of work that could be addressed by young people on the day. The challenges were approved by PW’s EAR to ensure they would be fun, meaningful and would indeed promote the influence of children and young people in the programme.
On the day itself, everyone was welcomed and introduced to the programme with an interactive game devised by our Enquiries service. Members of staff outlined the challenges they faced and participants were asked to choose one from the menu one that they’d like to address, and how they’d like to do it.
The group organised themselves to address 3 of the challenges that included planning a staff away-day, making recommendations to our sustainability strategy and designing a new marketing strategy for our Youth at the Table course. They researched the challenges in various ways: on-line, by interviewing the Head of Participation Works, through telephone surveys with PWNE Coordinators and members of the National Steering Group and by receiving a taster session of the training to inform their knowledge.
After a hearty lunch and a silly warm-up dancing activity, the group re-convened to plan how they wanted to feedback to Participation Works staff their findings and recommendations. One group opted for powerpoint, one group made a series of recommendations and the away-day challenge was solved with a budget and schedule ready to take forward.
PW’s EAR will be checking with us what we are going to take forward and will be feeding back to all the participants the outcomes of their recommendations.
When asked at the end of the day to respond to a participatory evaluation activity, comments we received included to the question, ‘What did you love or really enjoy about today?’ included:
“I liked calling people and finding out their opinions”
“How everyone works together. Also, it really felt that it is us, the young people, who are making the differences and coming up with ideas”
“Discussing ideas that were listened to and will be acted on”
And from the staff involved:
“The diverse range of challenges the young people took on and the amount of original ideas generated”
“I enjoyed seeing how much the young people enjoyed working on the challenges and how much they got out of it”
For us at Participation Works, we gained more direct experience of involving children and young people directly in our work. I personally was impressed with the confidence of the young people we worked with and their ability to seize the challenge with enthusiasm and develop some inspirational solutions and solid recommendations about how we can move forward.
Participation Works Network for England Coordinator
Mon, 17/11/2008 - 01:00
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