2018….

Happy New Year to you all!

We have already had quite a fab time with the Social Action Hub work. We are delighted to have the news that our bid for delivering the training to NCS graduates was accepted!

The extra funding will enable us to train up 30 NCS graduates across Wiltshire and Swindon. Working with NCS we have had a really great reaction to this; so far training up 8 people last weekend. We were blown away by the enthusiasm and input that went on over the weekend.

As a Social Action Hub we feel that when training young people around this (especially if they are wanting to get involved in their community with listening and support), all young participants should also be trained up in safeguarding. This also happened over the weekend and so the young people volunteered two days of their time to attend these training days.

Many of the young people that we work with are experiencing difficulty in their lives, or can sometimes come to us through groups such as Young Carers, NEET and Inspire. For this reason we realise the importance of being there to support them throughout the training and beyond.

We recently piloted a programme through four schools across Wilts and Swindon where we could deliver the training to young people. An imperative part of this training was a five week engagement programme that allowed us to get to know the young people, and for the young people to get to know us.  The feedback that we have had from the young people, their teachers and their parents, is that the mentoring and support that came around this delivery was key to the confidence and success of the young people.

We are now looking for more funding to enable us to support young people in schools; as schools have expressed that they have more students keen to join our programme.

Caption: Eleanor using her listening skills at Bradon Forest School, Purton

Following on from the weekend training we have a few of the participants who are keen to use their skills to support them with existing projects. The young people who took part in last weekend’s training are all going to be young leaders for Youth Action Wiltshire; and are keen to listen to other people that attend the projects that they support on over the summer. This will enable them to facilitate groups and ideas, and support and inspire other young people to feel heard.

By far our favourite part of the day’s training was POWER.

Those of you that know us know that the Power section of the training has not always been our favourite; but that has definitely now changed!

To watch 10 young people embrace such a complex topic, with such energy and interest was totally inspiring and impressive. Our participants ranged from age 13-18, and not one of them held back from getting involved.

Our DEFINITIONS OF POWER were so well considered and seeing how easily they were able to gave input made us change our perception of the Power session itself. It is fantastic that; as much as the young people may learn from us with our training, we can continue to learn so much from them!