Youth Social Action Resource Hub

This guide can help users maximise the impact of working in partnership with the local community. Community and stakeholder engagement in a youth social action programme involves young people working with other interested individuals or organisations to deliver action and change. The engagement can help increase access to students' learning opportunities, boost student retention, promote optimism among teachers, and improve children's school attendance rates.

This project was sponsored by the Ormiston Trust to promote performing arts within Birmingham, enabling them to access specialist teaching and resources utilising the facilities at Birmingham Ormiston Academy. In 2022/23, BOA's Super Saturday School ran for six weeks, and BOA aimed to improve the programme to be eight weeks in 2023/24. The outreach scheme caters for school children from ages 4 to 16. The children who attend the weekend provision journey from all areas of Birmingham and represent over 40 schools from various backgrounds and cultures.

US-based Earth Force uses Environmental Action Civics. Students share power with adults, practice democratic decision-making, and address local environmental problems using civics.

Did you know that it takes 10–20 years for a plastic bag to break down and 450 years for a plastic bottle to do so?
  Project Pristine is a youth-led litter picking scheme in which volunteers travel to beaches and collect litter in rubbish bags. There are three core aims: to protect marine life, clean beaches, and explore the ocean, as well as raise awareness about the issue. Other key partners were involved who helped with publicity and schemes like ‘Adopt a Spot’ where Project Pristine adopted and committed to regularly cleaning a beach with one of the worst litter problems.  

Two schools collaborated - Marsden Heights Community College and Park High School Colne – for the students to discuss the issues which were important to them and the wider community. The project took the students on a journey to learn about the school, local, national and international matters. They learnt and expressed how they felt about things and what their peers thought too. They engaged with local councilors, community workers and the general public on current matters. They then worked with a local poet to create a message to go back to the school and the community about their experience.

The Advocacy Academy is an activist youth movement of young leaders fighting for justice and equality. They serve as the political home for grassroots youth organizing and the catalyst for collective action. The power of movement building is not about feeling ‘confident’ or ‘courageous’. Power is the ability to act; this is important when 88% of young people feel that their voices are completely unheard in society. They run immersive programmed to train young leaders who then continue their journey with The Advocacy Academy. Currently, there are 122 alumni.

11 young Traveler peer researchers were trained in basic qualitative research skills and assisted in creating a questionnaire. The peer researchers interviewed 44 x 15 - 25-year-old Travelers in London about the barriers they have faced around education, both in school and at home. They were also asked for their recommendations for improvements to the education system. The research found that the experience of bullying in school is more of a norm than an exception for young Travelers in London.

KIDS, a UK national charity supporting young people with Special Education Needs & Disabilities (SEND), co-created a secret shopper initiative in North London with some SEND young people. As well as choosing a range of local venues to be evaluated against disability-friendly, accessibility and inclusiveness criteria, the project tackled loneliness for this group. The project addressed disability awareness across community organizations in Islington, raised the profile of disabled young people in the area, and made the community more inclusive, benefitting all local disabled people. 32 young people participated.