Five tips for setting up a youth advisory board
Author: Nicky Crabb, Director, Little Green Pig In 2019, Little Green Pig got an #iwill Fund grant to help us set up our first ever youth board; a long held desire for the organisation, as we are always trying to improve the ways we centre the voices of the children and young people we work […]
What I’ve learned from six months of co-leadership
Lamesha Ruddock, Co-Executive Director of Boundless Theatre and Creative Director of Blemme Fatale Productions At 22 years old, it’s unusual to be able to say that I’ve just spent 6 months as co-Executive Director of a theatre. But that’s what I’ve been doing – job sharing with an older adult at the London-based Boundless Theatre. […]
The softer skills needed for safe listening spaces
Claudia Elliot, Communications at Listening Fund’s Learning Partner, Collective Discovery Creating safe spaces for effective listening to young people requires skill. But which skill(s), exactly? We spoke to a group of Listening Fund partners to explore what different types of expertise were proving particularly valuable in their work. And whilst ‘hard’ skills – such as […]
How do you set up a great youth board?
Insights from Listening Fund partners on Youth Boards and Advisory Groups By Claudia Elliot, Collective Discovery We have been exploring the many ways youth sector organisations, and others, can increase their accountability to young people – listening to them in order to serve them better, and improve their organisation’s impact. Youth boards and advisory groups […]
A young person’s account of the difference good listening can make
Authors: Chloe Sutcliffe, Listening, Advocacy and Mentoring Coordinator, Life Chance Trust, and Jessie Ford, an Every Chance Champion and Youth Board member, Life Chance Trust Chloe: What are the challenges of leaving school? Jessie: I think for me personally, leaving school was leaving that familiarity and the structure. There’s a lot of fear of the […]
The benefits and challenges of listening to young neurodiverse people
Author: Kerry Hunter, Early Years Neurodiversity Specialist and National Neurodiversity Youth Council Co-ordinator, ADHD Foundation What we do The ADHD Foundation is the UK’s leading neurodiversity charity, offering a strength-based, lifespan service for the 1 in 5 of us who live with ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia, DCD, Dyscalculia, OCD, Tourette’s Syndrome and more. We offer national […]
Life Chance Trust: Learning from our first year of listening
Author: Chris Keeling-Rowe, CEO, Life Chance Trust What we do The Life Chance Trust provides mentoring, life skills training and practical support to 16-25 year olds for whom trauma in childhood has caused social, emotional and/or educational difficulties that may exclude them from the traditional pathways to training and employment. In particular, we aim to […]
Young grantmakers’ day
Author: Sophie, a Listening Fund adviser I’m one of the ten advisers to The Listening Fund. As part of our role over the past few years, we have designed two grant rounds of Phase Two from scratch, thinking carefully about things like criteria, scoring, and accessibility at all stages, and then chosen which organisations to […]
The Listening Fund’s partner jamboree
Author: Edd Fry, Listening Fund programme manager “Jamboree – a large celebration or party, typically a lavish and boisterous one“ OK, so I wouldn’t say we reached ‘boisterous’. And ‘lavish’ might be a stretch given that at one point we ran out of tea. But there was definitely a celebratory air in mid-April when we […]
Listening with Youth Ambassadors at KRAN
Author: Fawzia Worsley, Youth Engagement Coordinator for Kent Refugee Action Network The Listening Fund has helped KRAN to properly listen to our young people: even though we knew that we needed to understand young refugees better, we also felt that we probably knew better. Such is the way of adults. What we do at KRAN […]