Participation & Youth Involvement
Training Workshops
Youth Advocacy & Participation
An Introduction to Peer Mentoring
Training Senior Members & Young Volunteers
Developing Facilitation Skills
Confidence Building & Assertiveness
This section offers a range of training programmes to support and motivate young people to get involved in their communities and bring about positive change.
Youth Advocacy & Participation
From local campaigns to peer education programmes and service consultations there are an increasing number of opportunities for young people to shape the services they use and get their voices heard in the community.
This training will help develop the skills young people require to campaign, advocate and represent peers on the issues that affect them.
This course is offered as a one or two day course, and can be delivered as a ‘train the trainer’ programme for anyone working with young people on the participation agenda. Alternatively Vanessa can facilitate it for groups of up to twelve young people aged 13-19.
Learning outcomes
- By the end of this training participants will have:
- Considered ways to promote active citizenship and community participation
- Developed communication and listening skills
- Increased self confidence and motivation
- A clearer understanding of advocacy and the skills required to represent others
- Considered diversity issues and thought of ways to get the voices of under-represented young people heard
Supporting Youth Work Resource Book: Young People & Citizenship
An Introduction to Peer Mentoring
Peer mentoring is powerful because it offers opportunities to talk, develop coping skills and discuss important issues with someone of a similar age, all within safely prescribed boundaries. For the mentor it is a chance to learn new transferable skills and gain confidence whilst developing a wider sense of self and a greater understanding of others. For the mentee it provides an opportunity to get support for a wide range of issues including exam stress, training and employment, bullying and relationships.
Delivered in-house by award winning trainer Vanessa Rogers to practitioners or young people, this one day training package is designed to support the development of your peer-mentoring scheme. This introductory day explores the ethos of peer mentoring, increases awareness and provides those working with young people (aged 13-24) with a FREE ‘Peer Mentoring’ toolkit of session plans and resources to use again and again.
Learning outcomes
Participants will:
- Consider how peer support works and how it can have a positive impact and build resilience
- Increase understanding of the peer-mentoring role
- Look at building positive relationships between mentors and mentee's
- Explore boundary and confidentiality issues to keep mentors and mentees safe
- Consdier ways to successfully match mentors with mentees
- Offer a framework for the development of a peer-mentoring scheme
Supporting Youth Work Resource Book: Young People & Citizenship
Training Senior Members & Young Volunteers
This training can either be delivered by Vanessa directly to young people over three days, or as a one day ‘train the trainer’ course, enskilling those working in voluntary, statutory and private youth services to deliver Senior Member training to young volunteers in their own organisation. The course comes complete with an exclusive resource pack of session plans. These aim to develop the skills to lead activities ranging from teambuilding games through to facilitating more formal workshops, and build the qualities to become a confident team member.
Learning outcomes
Participants will:
- Explore the role of a senior member / young volunteer
- Learn about the ethos of youth work and working in a team
- Understand professional boundaries and confidentiality
- Discuss diversity and inclusion
- Consider the different skills and qualities required to work with children and young people in a youth work environment
Developing Facilitation Skills
This programme has been developed to enable young people to build the skills to facilitate peer workshops, consultation events and training. Working on assertiveness, exploring diversity and the ability to represent yourself and others, the day provides anyone working with 13-19 a toolkit to deliver facilitation skills workshops with confidence.
Learning outcomes
Participants will:
- Consider the range of opportunities for young people to use facilitation skills
- Explore a range of activities and tools to build facilitation skills
- Look at ways to enable young people to challenge effectively and manage group behaviour
- Consider diversity and cultural issues
Confidence Building & Assertiveness
This workshop aims to provide a toolkit of ideas for workers to build confidence skills with young people enabling them to communicate more effectively using assertive behaviour techniques. It also offers ideas to explore with young people the difference between passive, assertive and aggressive behaviour and ways to say what you want, whilst respecting others.
Learning outcomes
This training offers participants the opportunity to:
- Explore confidence and sources of personal power
- Consider assertive, aggressive and passive behaviour
- Try out confidence and assertiveness building activities
- Take part in communication building activites
Supporting Youth Work Resource Books: Working with Young Women & Working with Young Men
Feedback from delegates...
'Vanessa clearly knows her stuff and it was a great experience!'
'This training gave me a framework that I can really use to set up my own training for Peer Mentors'
'The training was a very good variation between theory, practical and discussion.'
'Vanessa is clearly very knowledgable about Peer Mentoring and backed this up with real-life examples that I found really interesting.'
Course Attended: An Introduction to Peer Mentoring
"I wanted to say a massive thanks for the training that you delivered for our Staff Team on our residential. Everybody thoroughly enjoyed the day and took away a lot of learning that they are already applying to their practice. The evaluations forms were extremely positive and were complimentary of the style, content and delivery of your training."
Course attended: Confidence Building & Assertiveness