This is Bex‘s report on her and her charity team‘s experience of the Giving Nation Awards day in London and winning a trip to the Cameroon to support the Rainforest Foundation.

Treasure hunt!
After an early start, we arrived in London where we met up with the Giving Nation team and the other schools. Our first activity was a treasure hunt around Westminster.

The idea was to answer questions which led us to different places. At each place we had to take a photo to prove we had been there, and we got points for each place we visited, with bonus points for imaginative photos.


Our team had lots of fun doing this and it meant that we got to see lots of London‘s sites!

After the treasure hunt, we met up with the other schools again and went for lunch. This was a good opportunity to talk to pupils from schools around the UK, learn about their charity work and share ideas with them. We heard some really interesting stories and picked up some great ideas!

Awards ceremony

We then went to the Churchill Room at HM Treasury where the awards ceremony was to take place. Before the ceremony began we had the chance to do a television interview and meet the Minister for the Third Sector, Kevin Brennan.

The ceremony commenced, and all of the schools were presented with framed certificates to recognise their achievements. MP Kevin Brennan made a speech and presented the awards. Each regional winner also received £1000 to develop citizenship within their school.

Our amazing awards trip to Cameroon!

Representatives from the Rainforest Foundation UK were present, and they spoke about their work and what we might get up to while we are in Cameroon. It was not until this point that it actually sunk in that we had won! Just some of the things we could possibly do while there are visit a gorilla sanctuary and go on the Congo River in a dug-out canoe!

It was then time for us to talk about the work we had done over the past year to earn this trip, why we participate in charity events and the importance of citizenship and charity.

It was great being able to share our views and ideas with others and I really enjoyed doing the speech.

Why we get involved
We enjoy participating in all the fundraising and campaigning events that we organise as a team, but more than anything we loved the fact that we were able to get our voices heard on the issues we care about and we were able to make a difference to people‘s lives by supporting the work of worthwhile charities and getting involved.

Being Rewarded is a brilliant bonus!
We feel that we achieved a lot throughout the year and it is brilliant that a group of young people, together, can do so much and make such a difference. We think our work is very important, and to have been rewarded for it is a brilliant bonus. We would encourage other schools to get involved in charity work as education is a powerful tool and should be used to help others who are less fortunate than us.

At Citizenship Club we have very strong views about most issues, so we decided to do something about it instead of just sitting back and thinking it was someone else‘s problem.

Getting involved is SO important!
I think it is very important for other people, including the media and the government, to be aware of the positive work that young people are doing in their communities so that they can help to further that work.

People of all ages need to realise that the negative stereotypes of young people, which portray them as being apathetic and aggressive, do not apply to the majority of young people, and the Giving Nation competition is a great way of doing this.

We can‘t wait to support the Rainforest Foundation‘s work in Cameroon, and we know that it will be the experience of a life time!

Bex Bailey
Check out more images from the day here on flickr

I do not profess to be any expert on poverty but I remember clearly the constant wrench I felt in my stomach of sadness and the profound surge of anger I felt in my veins when, studying Latin American politics, I read anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes account of the normalisation of infant mortality in a shanty town in South East Brazil. For the women of Alto do Cruzeiro burying a baby that had died from hunger in a shallow grave behind the house was as normal as feeding the wailing infant on cheap or free drugs to drug it temporarily and stop it crying out in hunger. In Alto do Cruzeiro mourning the loss of a child was a luxury that its inhabitants could not afford. So, you see it is the basic, fundamental human emotions that are stolen by poverty and not just the obvious aspects of life that are affected.

But you don’t have to travel to Brazil to see the impact poverty has on children and adults alike. I recently learnt that according to research by national homeless charity, Shelter more than more than one million children in Britain live in inadequate housing: damp, over-crowded, temporary homes that are hardly conducive to quality of life. In addition, children living in poor housing conditions are amongst the most vulnerable children, most susceptible to bullying, mental ill-health and unsurprisingly are amongst the lowest academic achievers. The poor housing of these “hidden” children can have devastating impacts on their health and the instability of being constantly on the move make them insecure. Living in such poor conditions have a real, profound and very negative impact on life chances alone.

How hard must it be to aspire to a better life, an education, a healthy existence when you live in a damp home, you feel bullied daily, embarrassed and depressed? What kind of half-life does a woman leave when she cannot even the mourn the death of a child nor feel the joy of motherhood? It takes a certain amount of stability, a certain promise of food in your mouth or roof over your head to even begin to feel the normal, natural, human emotions of sadness and joy.

Today we held our annual Giving Nation awards ceremony. Forty-two teenagers brought the Treasury to life, buzzing full of happiness, enthusiasm and excitement as we gathered to celebrate their achievements and to be inspired by their stories of raising hundreds and thousands of pounds but also taking a stand and lending their names and voices to campaigns against child poverty, climate change and over 50 other causes close to their hearts. Together we are very powerful and schools and our young winners represent exactly that. Persuading 1600 to walk 10 miles is not a small feat but can be done if you are a school charity team determined to make a difference. The power of people to make a difference, the passion of young people to be part of and drive that change should never be underestimated.

In early 2008, national Giving Nation awards winners Felpham Community College traveled to Malawi with Sightsavers International. Whilst there the students helped at an eye screening of children and their parents and grandparents in a village: ” I tested the sight of a 21 year old guy, he had two cornea scratches on his eyes.” Myles, from the school aged 16 told me. “The scratches on his eyes have only developed to this state because the medical intervention needed early on, i.e. a small dose of medication in the early stages, did not take place. It is so crazy to think that his sight will be damaged for life now because some thing very small did not take place.” Myles told me. What is more devastating is to think that the original illness was caused potentially by a lack of clean water to clean his eyes or the unsuitable conditions the boy and his family were living in. Deciding to drink the scarce water resources rather than wash your face in it which has basic health impacts so easily avoided indicates just how complicated poverty is.

Myles got it, lots of young people do. On such an inspiring day like today, where teenagers put us more cynical and “busy-with-our-lives” adults to shame with their passions, commitment and hard work in the face of cynicism, it makes me feel more than ever how powerful we really are. It makes me even more certain that there by recognising and supporting campaigns to expose the complexity and deep-penetrations of poverty and by using our own knowledge to help people empathise with and better understand the suffering but also the common humanity of others, there must be a way to help people live fuller and happier lives.

I have also seen the happiness. I have seen how intervention can work. In Malawi we had the honour of meeting Moses, the name alone makes me smile, such a beautiful name and such a beautiful man. His lovely, smiley wife and he lived with their children in the Blantyre area of Malawi. He was a bicycle repairman who lost his sight but on losing his sight was supported by Sightsavers International to adapt his bike-making business and do the bits of his work he could do without sight. Wanting to and needing to supplement his income, he was also given the training needed to become a corn farmer. So in his late forties, the man lost his sight and gained a new career and way of life. He is now the most successful farmer in the region and, simply, he and his wife were of the smelliest, loveliest people I have ever seen.

Take hold of the power you have against poverty, I say. Tell people about it, try to understand it, shout about it. Get some one to do some thing about it. It is that simple.

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Bertrand Russell

Poverty in the UK, or ‘relative poverty’, has achieved a general consensus amongst the political class and inspired a new narrative based on life chances, social mobility and ending child poverty.

Poverty that’s relative is measured against average national incomes, with the European standard set at 60% of median incomes. As opposed to ‘absolute poverty’, the New Policy Institute’s ‘Poverty’ website defines it as “the concept…that, in a rich country such as the UK, there are higher minimum standards below which no one should fall, and that these standards should rise if and as the country becomes richer” (poverty.org.uk).

Expressions of poverty in the UK can be seen through the wider social consequences it produces, as those communities of relative poverty suffer not only a lack of jobs and money, but poor health and education, crime and violence, as well as a scarcity of hope. These factors add to further socially exclude pockets of relative poverty stricken areas, and push them away from the average living standards of other citizens.

The impact on younger generations struggling to find their feet in areas of relative poverty were highlighted in Unicef’s recent report ‘Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-being in Rich Countries’. After using 40 indicators to measured material well-being, family and peer relationships, health and safety and behaviour and risks, the report had a stark message for a UK featuring at the bottom of most results.

Prior to near market melt down, the news was transfixed on the ‘broken Britain’ crisis of hoodies, gang violence and overrun communities; the general narrative of disintegration in deprived communities. Suzanne Moore in the New Statesman wrote, “In short, children need a New Deal. They need to be seen as full of potential, not evil. Culturally, politically and economically, they need to stop being punished as symbols of our self- indulgent idea of moral decay” (New Statesman).

Under the consensus of relative poverty, old ideological battles do still get fought over the role that the state should play in ensuring that citizens don’t fall behind the country’s average. The fight against relative poverty and it’s consequences of social exclusion should be the fight to empower active citizens in deprived areas with the ability to rebuild their communities to make them stronger and more resilient.Much has been done to empower communities, with legislation such as the Sustainable Communities Act and the ‘Communities in Control’ White Paper aimed at devolving real power to a community to reverse some of the corrosive affects of poverty.

But people need to know their rights and have the resources to create positive change. As recent Joseph Rowntree Foundation research highlighted “People in poverty find it hard to participate in society because they lack the resources to do so, conversely, lack of participation exacerbates poverty” (Joseph Rowntree Foundation (pdf)). So the fight against poverty is one not only to empower the potential active citizen in every deprived community, but the fight to education communities about their power for change.

However, I am really interested in the role of individuals who are suffering from poverty and what they can do to reduce poverty on the world population. The work we do on Youth Act constantly shows us that the best and most effective solutions to public policy problems come from groups made up of individuals who are affected by that problem, so what can we do to engage people to take action on their own poverty?

The libertarian educationalist in me thinks that we need to invest time in equipping people with the skills and knowledge to find solutions to their own poverty as there isn’t a univeral solution to worldwide poverty - we need to ensure that the voices of the people who are being affected directly by poverty are heard in the discussions to allocate resources. It is more that participation we need to bring social action to the discssion on solutions to poverty!

I will be back to blog more on how to create spaces for a more deliberative discussion that leads to action on poverty later after I come back from the G-Nation Awards!!

There’s an apparently easy response to that: the internet. The resources are there now to bypass - even influence - traditional media.

There are two obstacles though.

Firstly, how to harness the power of social media tools to make your voice heard above the clamour of millions (and counting) of others.

Secondly, the dilemma that the poorest in society, in a civic sense as well as an economic one, are likely to be the least able or motivated to access those tools in the first place.

The British government recently pledged £xm to put computers and broadband into the hands of the nation’s poorest. This sounds great, and yes the tools can’t be used if they’re not available, but one day they will need replacing (and besides, the government has also just pledged £xb to protect our finances).

What we tend to forget is that most people already have tools of some kind or other. I’m not currently in front of a PC, I’m writing and publishing this post from my mobile phone, on the train. Granted the tools are poorer than those of my office PC, but still perfectly adequate.

The question then is of how to help people use the tools available to them.

There is a lot of discussion at the moment about ‘digital mentoring’ (of which I am broadly in favour), and of how informal and mutual education can be used to help bridge the ‘digital divide’.

And those mentors who start from a deeper understanding of the technologies are themselves in a good position to publicise the stories of the people they engage with. While many of those would probably do that anyway, encouraging mentors to be advocates could provide more ammunition for the fight aganst poverty.

As a 50.0 year-old I’m not particularly attuned to the finer points of web 2, so this took a while to assimilate, but some points stuck out that were particularly significant for citizenship.

Firstly, the conversation was rooted in the normal educational assumptions that those of us successful enough to have been invited might not question: firstly, there is something that we should learn, there are ways that we should prove we know it, and the reward is the career ladders for those whose confidence was built by having done so. What I expected from the evening was that the ‘informal education’ component would relate to people choosing what they wanted to learn and then learning it and then doing it. (Something like the way I learned the guitar when I was 14. I passed exams in playing the flute and piano, but with the guitar, who cares?… I formed a band! How pathetic would it have been if some educationalist had come along and said ‘well done in playing so well in that band - here’s a grade five equivalent certificate. Mmmm, I think not thanks.)

Informal education, I thought, would be user driven, enquirer based. And, well it usually is I suppose, if the internet is the world’s largest library what have we learnt about learning? Well if it has taught us one thing, it’s that when you put the population behind screens and leave them to find out what they want to know, the largest majority want to know what a lot of women look like naked.

But back to education… The most striking point for me in the conversation, and one that I had never considered, is how social networking has presumed to flatten any hierarchy - or any taxonomy, and has created a world where we are all ‘friends’. That’s not normal is it? It’s a fake world. I don’t mean that the world is full of friends and enemies, but it is that some are bosses, teachers, lawyers, shop assistants. The relationships are not ones of friends. But, I thought, that’s not right. We’re not all ‘friends’ in social networking sites… I have a facebook page - I didn’t make it my manager did - and people can only be my ‘fans’ (you may snigger). The taxonomy has been established… and it’s based on entertainment. The deal is that you actually came to the web to be entertained, not to learn.

But I’m not upset about that. It does make sense. But what doesn’t is that some of the other potential that is ‘citizenship based’ isn’t in there. What?

Let me start here: a while ago I switched relationship with a man I knew pretty well. He was a therapist and I was needing someone to help unscramble my head. So we changed the relationship for good. I started paying for him to know my every inner secret (he mostly stayed awake) in turn for his empathic reading of my make-up. He was no longer my ‘friend’ as such. He’d become more, and less than that.

In a citizenship setting - well, imagine someone was a ‘spokesperson’. Their job was to speak with the voice of all the people that had sent them messages agreeing with their perspective. I kind of think of someone like Jonathan Porritt - a spokesperson but maybe not a political party leader. (The analogy then becomes more like a trade union leader but around a particular issue of shared concern.) So when that person speaks they speak with the force of a million ‘sponsors’ (or whatever word suits) who could have written in and confirmed their support for Jonathan online. Jonathan Porritt is now a million people. And ‘friends’ is too feeble a word for those who ally to reinforce his persuasiveness. They might never actually want to meet him or have a two-way talk, that’s not the relationship.

Now the argument has moved a long way. As you all will be aware, there is such a thing as ‘citizenship education’, and 10 years ago a pile of political scientists got together to work out what people should know in order for them to become prepared as citizens. So if education is about pre-defined banks of knowledge and understanding, then citizenship education might have an official curriculum, if democracy is the repository of the educationalist. But democracy isn’t something you learn and then do, it’s something we all make up as we go along by sheer force of the collective will. So in theory the web could be used for much greater purposes, and indeed it might… as a tool for mobilizing citizens, except, well the rules weren’t made that way: they were made to sell mp3s or get people closer to sponsors.

So now I’ve differentiated between citizenship as a formal educational curriculum and as the way we choose to learn how to associate and how to fashion society, does Web 2.0 really have anything to offer - particularly for those who want to learn by doing rather than learn for learning?

Firstly, could you imagine a mobilization version of Facebook, with different taxonomies: of spokesperson, teacher, polemicist, arbitrator etc.? Would people want to network socially in order to sift through possible new alliances, discover new options for representation replacing those that have collapsed in society over the last 50 years? Or did it collapse precisely through the same process of attrition that resulted in Facebook and its compatriots surfacing as entertainment sites: sufficient mass affluence to atomise the entertainment industry to such a personal level that we now choose to make friends through the intermediaries of the net?

What currently happens is that specialist sites serve the network of social needs, while social networking makes the connections betweens friends, but they are friends on the lowest common denominator level. Scratch beneath the surface and I’d disagree with so many of my 2,000 myspace ‘friends’ that the term is utter nonsense.

If I want my friends to have any level of political allegiance my social networking sites need new categories, or I need to go out and meet them.

We all met up at Victoria to start what was going to be one of the best Youth Act resi weekends ever! A packed train took us to Lewes and a nice man took us to our little youth hostel - we then thought we would start dinner but hadn’t reckoned on the world’s slowest oven as a partner!! After many hours, and several burnt pizzas, we settled down to get to know each other round a fire telling scary stories! That was when we got another member of the team for the weekend - Muncan II (part stick, part Youth Act team member) has been with us ever since:)

The group worked on a map of London and identified that many of the issues facing London stemmed from the way the media reported areas of London - we are scared of going to Hackney because of the murder mile tag but in reality it is a nice and safe place to be. So the plan is to work on how to develop media literacy amongst young people and also help the media to be more responsible in their reporting - future details to come!!!

David Lammy who is the local MP and also the Minister for Skills started us off with a rousing speech and Lee Carryl, the head of Citizenship at Gladesmore asked us all to sign the Value Life wall, nice touch My Carryl!!

The sun came out as all the students piled into 10 open top buses that wove their way slowly from South Tottenham to Wood Green. There were over 1000 students on the bus with teachers and the Youth Act team and we certainly made sure that everyone on the route to Ducketts Common heard us and knew what we were trying to do! People came out of the offices and schools and waved us on and it was nice to see such a positive response to young people in the community.

When we finally arrived at Ducketts Common, we discovered that there were film crews from ITV Local and Sky News there and that made us all feel quite famous:) We started the march at the bottom end of Wood Green High Street and marched through the main street, giving information to shoppers and people in traffic. The students that took paart were from years 7 to 10 and everyone really got involved with the chants - it was like the 60s reborn!

Rev Nims from the Peace Alliance kept our spirits up in the baking heat as we walked through and we eventually arrived en masse at Decorium having picked up another 250 people on the way! The students then went into Decorium for a showcase of music, poetry and MC-ing about knife crime which culminated in a show by Chipmunk (brap, brap to the mc crews!)

The march was amazing - I felt really moved by the fact that the whole thing started with a group of 9 young people and 2 adults to nearly 2000 people - it is amazing what you can achieve if you want to!!!

The photos are on Flickr

Now I am no deigital media genius so I was a little apprehensive that the conference would be way above my head but it wasn’t and not only that, it was actually really interesting and really relevant for citizenship and engagement of young people.

I was particularly struck by the seminars that talked about how we related to the internet as a result of social networking sites and Google (more user generated content) and how that could have an an impact on the work that we do on the Youth Act program. We work hard to build up the capacity of young people to be able to make decisions on the training program on the campaign issue and how they go about achieving their campaign aim and we have now started working on Facebook to try and get young people to share what that experience is like for them which is great however, what else can we do to allow/ encourage young people to generate the content of the training within a framework similar to the way they generate the content on Facebook, Bebo etc within the framework of those sites?

On 23^rd June 2008 Ade and I took a group of young people from the Youth Act Graduate Council to a consultation by the Government Office of London with Rt Hon Tessa Jowell who were trying to ascertain what the governments priorities for Young people should be.

Meeting at 2pm 8 young people from Brent, Southwark and Harrow  all met at the Citizenship Foundation. We led a workshop with them to get thinking about the key issues the consultation would address regarding ‘ Your Future, Your Safety, your Voice and Your Services’ However a much heated discussion of their future meant we remained on the first point!

The group discussed everything from apprenticeships in schools, careers advice and higher education to tuition fees, education as a crime reducer and peer mentoring. The broad range of issues they covered just highlighted how important their future really was to them. They had concerns over sets in schools and their was much debate over whether they helped or hindered students. Peer mentoring was something which they all felt really passionate about, in creating role models and more positive action within schools. The discussion even led onto some debate on citizenship with Aakash 14 saying ‘it is a real life subject that affects everyone. Citizenship is so important in schools’ – with no prompting from Ade or myself!

We headed down to Milbank Tower for the consultation itself with other groups of young people from Fairbridge, Summer Uni and Home-Start to name but a few. The facilitators asked the young people to mingle with each other and then write on flipcharts their thoughts, issues and concerns regarding the four themes, before voting on some key issues in the main room. Finally at 6pm the RT Hon Tessa Jowell Minister for London and the 2012 Olympics arrived and the debate really began.

The event was a really positive opportunity for the group of Youth Act Participants to have their voice heard, and gave them the chance to ask a senior minister some direct questions. The young people who attended by no means gave her an easy ride quizzing her about poor youth provision in their areas, bad press about teenage Mums and about not being heard. Fatima, 18 from Youth Act asked the Minister what they planned to do with the information from the consultation, and how could they ensure it was meaningful? This was a key theme that the group were particularly keen to look at, with growing concerns, they are now often asked for their opinions, but the real questions is whether they are heard. This was one of the themes the minister hoped to address, and one which we at Youth Act are also interested in. Very often young people are given the fantastic opportunity to have their voices heard, and get to meet some very senior ministers.

But how meaningful are these consultations and how can we ensure they are conducted in the most appropriate and conducive manner?

The event finished after the Minister agreed to stay later to answer all the key questions and the group were really positive about it. The facilitators also approached us and asked us what we felt the issues were. We are now in a climate whereby the public is constantly consulted, and it is brilliant to know young people are starting to have a voice, and getting their views, their thoughts to key decision makers. However for truly meaningful and effective consultation we need to ask; are their voices truly being heard?

Nicola Harwood, Youth Act