Youth Social Action Project

From March 2023 until March 2024 East Sussex Community Voice delivered the Youth Social Action Fund Project.

Our Youth Advisory Board

Young people from across East Sussex were given the opportunity to join our Youth Advisory Board (YAB).

The YAB was a strategic oversight group made up of 5 young people from the local community. They met regularly with ESCV staff during the design phase of the project to ensure it represented young people’s voices and views.

The YAB designed much of the project’s communication materials and evaluation forms to ensure that they were appropriate and accessible for young people.

Maresfield Group Activity

We worked with a group of young travellers to develop a project to challenge the negative stereotypes and discrimination that young travellers regularly face.

The young people decided to work with a local traveller blacksmith to design and create a sculpture which they felt represented the positive aspects of their community.

They designed, and helped to forge, a galvanised steel sculpture of their grandfather sitting upon a bench designed to look like the wheel of a traditional gypsy wagon and a horse.

The bench was designed in a way which they hoped would encourage people to sit and discuss the traveller way of life.

Moving forward we are looking to expand on the project by sharing the bench at community events and locations to raise awareness of the work.

Bexhill Social Action Workshop

We ran a Social Action workshop for over 200 students from St Richards College at the De La Warr Pavilion.

With the help of Priority 1-54, students were supported to design their own social action campaign on topics and issues which they felt affected young people today. We shared examples of how creativity could be used within social action to raise awareness, engage audiences and to deliver messages.

When designing their campaigns students were asked to consider a theme that mattered most to them, who it could be aimed at, and how they could reach their intended audience.

Campaign themes included:

• Sexual Violence
• Environment
• Ocean wellbeing
• Young people’s rights
• Bullying and harassment
• Food poverty
• Mental health and self-care
• Inclusion and diversity

Following the workshop students presented their ideas to one and other feedback on each presentation.

Did we see the difference we set out to achieve?

Throughout the lifetime of the project, we saw an increased confidence in our participants to try new activities, participate in meetings, contribute their ideas, and speak in front of groups of their peers.

With the groups we worked with over several months we increasingly saw participants ‘come out of their shells’ and get involved with the activity more and more. It was also notable during our social action’s workshops, with several attendees telling us they were not comfortable talking in front of their peers at the beginning of the session, but by the end, they volunteered to speak to the entire year group about their ideas.

A greater sense of self-worth was demonstrated through our Maresfield project with the young people involved telling us that they felt proud of the work they did, and what they achieved. They felt it helped them realise their ideas and opinions had value. The participants preferred the term ‘self-esteem’ and told us they felt more confident in themselves.

They told us they felt more accepted and connected to their local community and they were more confident to freely move around the local area, use local services and speak to others who live and work in the community.

The workshop students became more aware of both local and global issues which affect young people and told us they are more confident to participate in future social action which would positively impact local communities.

51.9% of workshop participants said the workshop strengthened their ability to communicate with others, saying:

• ‘I feel more confident to express myself’
• ‘I was able to share my ideas with my peers and speak up for my opinions’
• ‘I spoke to people and believed in my voice.’

What now?

Although our funding from BBC Children in Need has come to an end, we will continue our work on listening to and amplifying the voices of young people across the county and embedding youth friendly practice into all that we do.

With funding from ESCC we are continuing our work with young travellers in Maresfield, touring the sculpture they created during the YSA project around the Wealden district.

We are always looking for new opportunities to work with young people to influence positive change.

 Keep an eye on our website for the latest updates on our work.

Funding Information:

The #iwill Fund supports the aims of the #iwill campaign – to make involvement in social action a part of life for young people, by recognising the benefit for both young people and their communities.

The #iwill Fund is made possible thanks to £50 million joint investment from The National Lottery Community Fund and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to support young people to access high-quality social action.
 
By bringing together funders from across different sectors and by making sure that young people have a say in where the funding goes – the #iwill Fund is taking a collaborative approach.

Further information

Work with ESCV

Let’s chat about your project

If you have a project in mind, or are interested in one of our existing projects – please get in touch.

Contact us