Participation in Action: Young Londoners learn how to go green for a bright future
Adam Offord
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Young people in London are helping to make improvements to their local environment while gaining valuable skills and qualifications.
Provider vInspired
Name vInspired Eco Talent
The Big Lottery Fund's Our Bright Future programme aims to create the next generation of environmental leaders.
To help do this, 31 youth organisations have been handed a share of £33m this year through the programme. One of these, youth social action charity vInspired, has used the money to develop its Eco Talent programme, which aims to help 16- to 25-year-olds in London find the skills to move into education, employment or training.
The programme is an environmental version of vInspired's Talent programme that began in 2009.
Leigh Jenkins, programme manager at vInspired, says the young people undertake three modules during the six-month programme and the target is to reach at least 240 young people by the end of 2018.
"The first six weeks on the programme is spent in an induction and team-building module, explains Jenkins. "After that they progress into a social action project module that lasts 12 weeks."
She says the youth-led social action projects - which are supported through small amounts of funding of up to £500 from the charity's Cashpoint initiative - are about supporting young people to identify the environmental needs they want to address in their own communities.
One social action project called Project Upcycle was created by a young person to teach and support other young people to reuse and "upcycle" old materials such as jars and boxes to reduce waste.
Another was designed to cultivate green spaces in a local park by building two raised herb and flower beds, planting trees and improving the environment around a pond. Other projects sought to repurpose space in a park to grow fruit and vegetables and use them in a community cooking event to improve community cohesion.
"The projects we run on Eco Talent are run by young people on the programme but they also have additional benefits for engaging the wider community and additional volunteers, so they have a much broader impact," Jenkins adds.
The final six-week module is about supporting young people to reflect on the skills and experience they have gained.
Underpinning the whole programme is a voluntary placement at one of the charity's local authority delivery partners - the Canal & River Trust, Ealing Council, and Tower Hamlets Council.
Jenkins says the young people will identify what environmental operations at the delivery partners "reflect their interests" before undertaking the programme, which could be in the parks, horticultural or conservation departments.
"They are on placement throughout the whole programme and they study towards an accredited Level 2 qualification with an environmental focus and the reason behind that is it is not just about building skills but they can also walk away from the programme with a hard qualification," Jenkins adds.
"We expect our partners to engage with cohorts of 15 so we would expect 50 per cent to be not in education, employment, or training at the start of the programme. We also know it is beneficial when there is a mixed group so we also want them to target young people who have a passion for environmental issues and conservation."
Meanwhile, the social action projects are helping to sustain communities long term, while also helping community members get new skills through volunteering with the young people.
Jenkins says the first cohort has just finished but the programme will continue to run until December 2018. The social action charity also plans to look at what other sectors, such as healthcare, the Talent programme could work in.
