Newham Youth Partnership’s youth leadership group, Future Light stepped into the spotlight last week as they delivered a Life Skills event for fellow young people and organisations across Newham. The event provided a space to discuss the barriers young people face in accessing life skills support, and come up with collective solutions to improving access to support services.
Future Light member Promise Fayose, played a key role in the planning and delivery of the event, and shares his experience and the need for more events like this.
What was the process leading up to the event?
The process involved a lot of planning, decision making and collaboration with different partners (LBN Participation team, Public Health, UCL Partners and Fight for Peace) to plan how, where and when the event would take place. I was involved from the start and input all the way through and loved how youth voices were heard throughout.
What was Future Light’s role?
Future Light was pretty much leading every part. I gave the presentation and did an icebreaker to warm up the room, facilitating discussions on barriers and solutions, and supporting people to use the map projected on the floor. It was amazing because I saw people step up, take ownership and work together and their confidence flew. It encouraged a lot of bonding and teamwork among Future Light.
How did it go?
Really well. I could visibly see relief from people to see there’s so much support on offer and the map was really helpful in being interactive and opening people’s minds up to what’s available to them. I could see the engagement and loved how ready and up for talking people were. The amount of people that said ‘what you did was a big thing’, that kept it real. Often events have a thin layer of facade but people were really open and there were lots of smiles. I also loved the food (shout out to Siobhan!)
What were you most proud of?
Everybody. I was proud of how willing everyone was to work together. It was a huge milestone for me personally and I learnt a lot about myself getting to this point. I’ve learned how important it is for me to step into more leadership. I’ve seen my growth and this has taught me I can be proud of myself, trust my own ability and that when I plan, things go so much better. It honestly reinstalled a lot of confidence.
What feedback did you get?
People gave great feedback saying it was well organised, with important discussions and a great opportunity for networking. One young person who joined us shared: ‘a lot of events focus on olders and youngers separately, but you brought them all together and helped us connect. The olders were speaking to the youngers and sharing information – everyone was involved. I didn’t feel segregated.’
Why is it important to you for young people to be involved in the NYP?
It’s important because this is our generation we’re all working for. I just think you’ll get left behind if you’re not willing to participate. Young people now, they don’t want to conform, they want to do the forming. I witness that every day and it’s cool to see. I’m ready to do more.
What does the Life Skills event follow up look like?
The next steps are to bring together those who volunteered to join the working group to take forward the collaborative actions from the event. Everything on the interactive map will be put onto the Newham Youth Map which will go live again this summer. This was the first, but for sure won’t be the last event Future Light lead, and I want to see Future Light stepping out more.
The Life Skills event built on a previous Newham Youth Partnership project with Kailo and UCL, where Future Light helped explore the root causes of poor mental health in Newham. One key finding revealed that 67 young people didn’t know where to access support for life skills. Read the full report here.
The Newham Youth Partnership is a collaboration between youth organisations in Newham aimed to increase access to support for young people and their families. To stay updated with activities and opportunities, head to the NYP website, LinkedIn and Instagram pages.
