Citizenship Foundation Voices

At the beginning of July I joined the Citizenship Foundation as a Press and Events Intern in the Communications Team. I arrived to a whirlwind of planning, correspondence, and a mammoth ‘to-do’ list in preparation for an upcoming event at the House of Lords called ‘Young People Driving Change‘.

As a relative newcomer to the Citizenship Foundation I was unsure of what to expect in the run up to ‘Young People Driving Change’. Those involved in the organisational process had obviously put a lot of hard work in, but did this mean it was going to be a success? In one word - yes.

Although any event that runs smoothly, has a fantastic turnout and is granted the blessing of the English weather, (all of which true of last Wednesday) can be classed as a success, I think that an event needs to achieve far more than that to qualify. For me the true measure of success is in the ‘feel’ of an event and what we take away from it as individuals.

The ‘Young People Driving Change’ event definitely had the ‘feel good factor’. I would challenge anybody not to be inspired by so many ambitious, innovative young people voicing their opinions and talking so passionately about a wide range of issues. From deforestation in Cambodia to the issues facing Muslims in the wake of 9/11, young people of all ages illustrated to ministers, barristers, and other professionals how they were making a positive change in society. However, I would have to say the group of young people that impressed me the most were those involved in the Value Life project, an anti-knife and gun crime campaign. From a thousand strong peace march to producing a film, the phrase ‘the sky is the limit’ obviously features strongly in their mindset.

As an individual I also gained a lot from the event. As well as cementing my belief that young people can really make a difference if presented with the right opportunities, the event also opened my eyes to the benefits of these projects for the young people participating in them. Such projects build young people’s confidence and provide them with valuable skills they can use throughout life.

Overall I left the event feeling inspired to get involved in more voluntary work, optimistic that the Citizenship Foundation can really make a difference, and somewhat envious that I had not had the chance to partake in citizenship myself when I was at school.

I have first hand experience of the value businesses and their employees can bring to the classroom having been a volunteer myself and also spending my recent career managing employee volunteering programmes.  Increased motivation, confidence, self-esteem, employability skills and communication ability are just a few of the benefits to young people (and adults!) that spring to mind when I think about partnerships between businesses and schools.

I now manage the Giving Nation Challenge at the Citizenship Foundation which, along with other schemes such as Lawyers in Schools, aims to provide support to young people by providing adult volunteers to share their expertise whilst acting as role models and coaches in a classroom setting.

I am therefore very impressed to hear about a new campaign launched by charity Education and Employers Taskforce which is dedicated to help build awareness amongst organisations of all sizes in the public and private sectors about how they can support their local school and help shape the motivation, skills and employability of young people.

The ‘Visit our Schools’ week is taking place between 18-22 October 2010. It provides business leaders with the opportunity to visit their local school, meet the Headteachers, staff and students to inspire them to get involved and make a big difference to their communities.

Schools and colleges are encouraged to register to take part. Business leaders can also sign up to visit their local school.

I hope that this week helps to develop many fruitful relationships between businesses and schools and I look forward to updating you on the outcomes later in the year.

For the last two years the Foundation has been working with The British Council to launch a new international programme called ‘Active Citizens’.

This got going in earnest towards the end last year. Xenia Davis and I travelled to Bangladesh and Pakistan to help train the first set of trainers there: around 35 in each country.

I discovered today that since last November when we went there the training has been cascaded down to nearly six thousand people! There are now around 350 new social action programmes beginning all over those two countries - in busy urban to remote rural settings.

The programme uses simple principles developed over the years at the Citizenship Foundation. It helps people connect their experience of growing up in a particular culture with the issues that they would like to change. They then consider the decision-making structures in their area, and what they might do to raise awareness of the problem. Through their own collective action and through talking to policy makers they work towards a solution.

Participants in countries around the world will use the basis of this social action project to develop dialogue with each other.

In June I am going to Croatia to help to establish the European element of the programme, which is already alive in Southern Africa as well as Central Asia. Something like 15 European countries are expected to attend and start using the methods we have helped devise for the British Council.

On a personal level I’m still adjusting to the fact that 6,000 people across Asia have been using session ideas that I dreamt up to stimulate local and global citizen actions. Modesty aside, I’m told people love them! After 35 years of writing songs, I’ve finally had a hit…

I was struck by the clear distinction between these two terms in the article by Zygmunt Bauman in the new Demos / V publication ‘An Anatomy of Youth’.

In his article ‘Belonging in the age of networks’ he differentiates the essence of these two terms. In short, he suggests that a community is more normally a group that you have membership of regardless of personal choice, and that you can’t easily drop out of… e.g. the locality that you grew up in, or your extended family etc. Such communities are often crucial in your identity-formation - often because you didn’t get the chance to avoid them: you were formed in the crucible of their personal and cultural forces whether you liked it or not. By contrast ‘networks’ are nearly always opted into for personal benefit of some sort. Their subject or identity appeals to you, and your choice to affiliate will more likely relate to your ‘chosen’ identity than the one that you developed like it or not.

So ‘social networks’ and ‘communities’ are not then synonymous. The former can be lightly entered into, tested, adopted to various degrees as suits you, and opted out of again. The choices remain your own, and by inference, their ability to ‘form’ you is slight as you can resist their force and take your avatar and mouse elsewhere if you don’t like the way it’s going.

By contrast ‘communities’ can’t be avoided. You have to stay with them, learn to negotiate and manage your way through them. Communities have politics where networks have cultures. I use those phrases carefully. Of course, communities have cultures as well as politics, but the words I want to stress here are ‘negotiate’ and ‘manage’. These two words are at the heart of politics. Politics is the activity of negotiating and managing the social order into the preferred version of members of an organised community (my definition). We need politics precisely because we can’t opt out. But we can opt out of networks.

What’s critical here is that we recognise the role of social networks in politics. They are not communities of the same order and they are not the place to learn politics through simply being a member. By contrast, school is. You can’t avoid school, and it is indeed a crucible of personal and social formation, not just a place of education.

Social networks can be a place for amplifying preferred choices into a consolidated force for action in the way that members choose. In this way they can be a great force for political intervention. But we shouldn’t revere then as an equivalent of ‘real’ communities. Young people in social networks are not learning politics by virtue of being members. Perhaps it’s time to be uncool and mention that…

I was immediately intrigued by an email titled ‘The Big Lunch’ that landed in my inbox last week. The Big Lunch is an Eden Project initiative which aims to build and strengthen communities by encouraging people to have lunch with their neighbours.

The project brings communities together in a fun, simple and food-based way (which is, in my opinion, one of the best ways to get to know people). Last year Big Lunches took place in every kind of community from the most challenged to the most secure and as a result over 80 per cent of participants now say they feel closer to their neighbours.

So if you want to get to know your neighbours better, get involved in your community and have a lovely big lunch to boot take a look at their website to see if there’s a Big Lunch happening near you www.thebiglunch.com.

This year The Big Lunch takes place on Sunday 18 July.