Projects to engage young people in sustainability

NATURAL NEIGHBOURHOODS

Natural Neighbourhoods is a targeted programme that helps young people into employment. It creates jobs and develops a programme of environmental traineeships to support the improvement and protection of local parks and the greenspaces that matter to the surrounding communities.

The programme focuses on disadvantaged areas in the Eastern, Midlands and North regions, where people are experiencing the worst social and economic impacts of the pandemic. In these communities, Covid-19 has worsened health inequalities and led to a significant rise in youth unemployment.

Natural Neighbourhoods encourages existing and new local volunteers to get involved with local projects – working alongside landowners to enhance the quality of accessible green space in towns with high levels of deprivation; country parks in urban fringe areas; and pockets of public space in isolated rural communities.

This project is funded by the government’s Green Recovery Challenge Fund, which is being delivered by The National Lottery Heritage Fund in partnership with Natural England and the Environment Agency.

KICKSTART

Groundwork’s Kickstart scheme will provide hundreds of young people with their first jobs in community and environmental work, helping them to develop the skills they need to be at the forefront of a new green economy.

Combined with £2.2m from The Green Recovery Challenge Fund, Kickstart will create jobs for young people and unlock voluntary action on nature recovery and climate change by undertaking urgent work to protect and enhance parks and green spaces in communities.

Groundwork’s scheme is funded via the government Kickstart initiative.

KICK THE DUST: FUTURE PROOF PARKS

Groundwork has partnered with Fields in Trust and National Youth Agency to deliver Future Proof Parks – part of the £10m Kick the Dust initiative – that aims to get more young people interested and involved in preserving their local park and greenspace heritage.

Over the three-year programme, 880 young people across the UK in the West Midlands, East of England, West of England, North West and North East will learn more about their local historic park heritage.

The overall aim is that at least 180 young people will join their local “friends of” park groups and volunteer to preserve loved spaces.

The project also works with 60 “friends of” park groups to give them the tools, encouragement, and support to get more local young people involved in their work and to see the benefits of cross-generational working.

Future Proof Parks focuses on historic parks and heritage landscapes in five “hub” locations across England. In each hub, young people are supported to give their time and talents to support local groups and heritage organisations.

The programme is funded via The Heritage Lottery Community Fund.

GREEN LEADERS

Groundwork Green Leaders is a free programme that offers young people a mentor and hands-on support for them to design, create and start campaigns, events and action groups that improve the local environment, including greenspace projects.

The programme is designed to support young people to become advocates for change in their community all while building the confidence, knowledge and skills that lead to positive social action.

Green Leaders is open to young people aged 16 to 20 across Greater Manchester, London, Northamptonshire and the West Midlands. Those chosen to participate in the programme will be part of a group of 40 young people who share a passion for environmental action.

This project is funded via the #iwill Fund, through a £50m 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 opportunities. Co-op Foundation is acting as a match funder and awarding grants on behalf of the #iwill Fund.

NCS: YEAR OF SERVICE

Groundwork is a delivery partner for the National Citizen Service (NCS) UK Year of Service, a programme designed to give young people the opportunity to put their skills to work.

The initiative offers paid, meaningful employment serving the UK’s communities where the needs are greatest – connecting individuals with organisations to help tackle their toughest challenges.

Groundwork will work with young people aged 18 to 24 through the Green Projects initiative – an internship providing high-quality paid placements for young people in community-facing environmental roles across Groundwork. These roles will support a green and fair recovery in areas most affected by the pandemic, building competencies around environmental awareness and community development, while responding to local needs.

Each young person will be employed for 30 hours a week over nine months, based within an experienced Groundwork Trust delivery team embedded in the local community. A bespoke national training programme will lay the foundations for careers in community-based environmental action, with modules focusing on sustainability, carbon literacy and community development.

This will be supplemented by role-specific training and career progression support.

• More from www.groundwork.org.uk
  
  

EXPERT VIEW
WHAT DOES YOUNG CLIMATE CHANGE ACTIVISM TEACH US?

By Ben Bowman, Manchester Centre for Youth Studies

Young activism on climate change is changing the world, but can the power of young activism power sustainability on a local level too? In many localities across the UK, green projects and initiatives are blossoming as service providers – including children’s service providers – seek ways to “walk the walk, not just talk the talk” on sustainability.

“System change, not climate change”

The majority of young people are simply struggling to get by from day to day. Most young people feel under enormous pressure in a harsh economic climate and a profoundly difficult time to be a young person, and that goes for activists and non-activists alike.

Interconnected problems require interconnected solutions. Carbon pollution from road traffic, for instance, is an environmental issue, but it is also an economic issue, since road pollution tends to affect the poorest neighbourhoods worst.

The impact of sustainability initiatives in our communities is often felt most keenly at a local level. Liveable streets, breathable air, clean green spaces and energy efficiency are part of a global push that also makes everyday life better. The challenge of “interconnected solutions” is often best suited to a mixture of education on the one hand and clear pathways to influencing policy on the other.

Show young people the real impact sustainability can have on their everyday lives, while building clear and effective pathways for them to influence decision making. After all, if policy is going to affect them, it’s fair that they should have a meaningful voice in the process.

Not just a voice: young people should have power

We need young people’s skills, expertise and momentum to achieve deep and lasting change in our communities. Yet, so many young people feel powerless in their communities, and practitioners still struggle to give due weight to children’s views and to give young people meaningful power over decisions that affect them. Young people who are given a voice but not power may feel their involvement is tokenistic and patronising, as 16-year-old Itzel puts it: “At adult meetings, they tokenise your ideas a lot of the time. They come in with an agenda and they ask you for input, knowing they are already going to do what they’re going to do. So, a lot of times, it is pointless you even being there.”

Young people should be involved at every stage from planning, through the budget and delivery of sustainability initiatives, not just brought in at consulting stages or asked to promote the end result.

Children and young people often want to do things themselves, to focus on causes and issues that matter to them. Direct action requires a balancing act from practitioners who must support young people with opportunities to learn about the issues, organise with their peers and get mobilised around their own campaigns, while also supporting adult stakeholders who may be unfamiliar with the ways that young people make themselves heard. The result can be well worth it.

An important thing to remember: as we all know, information is power, and one superb set of tools for empowering young people is the approach called Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR). YPAR tools for youth-led citizen science are frequently found in sustainability projects around the world and many are available online. A good starting point is the YPAR Hub, a free toolkit of resources hosted by the University of California, Berkeley.

Democratic participation

Young activism on climate change teaches us that social, economic and environmental issues are interconnected. Young activists also teach us that young people want power, not just a voice. These principles are important for practitioners who want young people to be involved in sustainability initiatives in their communities.

The three principles we can learn from activism are educate, organise and mobilise, and involving young people in sustainability can build on these principles. We can educate young people about the ways sustainability connects to their everyday lives. We can support them to organise with their peers and to mobilise to take action in their own ways. By doing so, we can involve them in sustainability in their communities.

• Ben Bowman is lecturer in youth justice, Manchester Metropolitan University

FURTHER READING

• Young Londoners, Sustainabilityand Everyday Politics: The Framing of Environmental Issues in a Global City, Sustainable Earth, 2020

• ‘They Don’t Quite Understand the Importance of What We’re Doing Today’: The Young People’s Climate Strikes as Subaltern Activism’, Ben Bowman, 2020, Sustainable Earth

• YPAR Hub http://yparhub.berkeley.edu/

Read more in CYP Now's special report on sustainable services