The Centre for Youth Voice launched nearly 4 months ago and has gotten a lot of interest in the sector. While it’s still early on, we are already seeing an impact!
Matthew (who oversees the project) shared a load of figures which, I’m not going to lie, are impressive. However, I think our impact goes a lot further than figures! But I suppose we’ll allow for a sentence or two of bragging:
- Our newly minted website is up and running and has seen nearly 6,000 visitors, and I promise that’s not just us visiting it to admire our faces.
- Social media has been on its way up as well; our new LinkedIn page now has over 300 followers since it was launched in November. Everything we do we are going to be posting there too, so follow us!
- Our free training and events have seen a massive response, with over 1,500 people signing up to attend our community of practice, co-production training, or peer research seminars.
Like I said, I believe our impact reaches well beyond the numbers. We’re getting into the right rooms. We’re being heard. And we’re actively championing good practice across the sector. The response to our Peer Research Toolkit has been phenomenal. It’s a genuinely valuable contribution to the sector, ensuring effective research and development that makes a real difference. And honestly? We’re just getting started.
Over the coming months, we’ll be sharing examples of great practice from across the sector: local, regional, national, and beyond. Projects that are either doing youth participation really well, or taking it somewhere entirely new. And we want to hear from you! If you know of a project making a meaningful contribution to its community, one that puts young people front and centre, please get in touch. We’d love to shine a light on it.
For me, the real measure of our impact has been the quality of conversations we’ve been able to have as a Centre. And I want those conversations to keep growing, as they should. I want the Centre to be the first place people turn to when they’re looking to create opportunities for young people: the go-to place for anyone who wants to work genuinely WITH young people and make sure their voices are heard and valued. We’ve achieved a lot, but there’s so much more we want to do.
And it goes without saying, though I’ll say it anyway, the Youth Ambassadors are absolutely thriving in this new chapter. It’s been a real shift since we launched, and we’re incredibly grateful for the support we’ve received from the sector and beyond. So we’ll keep flying the flag for the Centre at every opportunity, and you can help by sharing what we do with anyone who wants to work with young people, not just for them.