Creativity , ideas and vision are the basis of everything. Look around the room everything from this computer to the chairs we are sitting on to the building we are meeting in started as an idea, then through a vision and belief it (they)became a reality. The world needs creative people and this is what the YOU project promotes as a way to becoming confident about the future and becoming engaged in learning..
Let me ask you a question...How do we overcome the problem of engaging the hearts and minds of young people to simply begin to start ‘thinking’ about coming back to some sort of training / education when we are competing with the power of games consoles, instant celebrity culture (or ‘famous for being famous’) the constant updating of social media platforms and the massive pull of the bling culture that is so much a part of our everyday lives? Incredibly rich young men and women pop stars living seemingly fabulous lives with no problems that money cannot solve. What can we as training providers offer these people to make them want what we are offering. How do we grab the attention of young people to draw them back to a classroom type environment when that is just the environment they have rebelled from in the first place. We need a ...(next slide)
Why? Why would any young person want to actually wake up on a cold wet morning and come along to one of our training courses? I believe we need to make each training session VERY personal and person centred – I feel the answer could lies with creative storytelling (next slide)
We all LOVE stories – from the heart wrenching back stories of the x factor hopefuls to the gossip magazines of hello and the runaway success of TOWIE. Peoples lives, simply far more fascinating that any soap opera. People m ake an EMTIONAL connection with these programmes and publications and when emotion becomes involved, we all buy in. This is the basis behind the ...(next Slide)Because of so many young people have low academic skills
The Me Tree Project. Young people given the opportunity to tell the story of their lives, their dreams and their problems through the medium of a Vision Board. Displayed in St Nicolas shopping centre (or mention the shopping centre if not in Lancaster)
The Me Tree will be adorned with Life leaves, each one created by the students taking part in the project. So what do we talk about? What will we include on the leaf
So we talk a lot about ‘stuff’ that every young person desires. We also talk about emotions and the exclusive emotion we all think that buying more and more stuff make us...
Keep going back, what do we think having more and more will make us... The real secret is in GIVING so each group is asked to choose a charity to support, something close to the heart of one of the young people in the group.
This is just a few events we have held so far this year. This helps to build lasting friendships, true teamwork and sky rocketing confidence. All of this is way out of their comfort zone and is a story in itself. and is the foundation for our peer mentor service. (talk about this.) raised around 2.5 k this year.
