Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while will have guessed by now that I am passionate about young peoples development through using International experiences.
To this end I have been putting together a year long Targeted Youth Support Programme with a bit of a difference, hopefully. Aimed at young people aged 16-19yrs who fall within our targeted groups and working across children and young peoples services in West Sussex the Inspire India Programme seeks to empower young people and support them to make choices and recognise their own skills & abilities. It will consist of six phases:-
Phase 1 – Recruitment of 30 young people and five staff from West Sussex
Phase 2 – Preparation and training of young people in all aspects of the programme
Phase 3 – Overseas Experience to India
This will be a 3-week experience delivered by Raleigh in conjunction with staff from West Sussex County Council. Key areas of the Overseas Experience will be:
• Personal Development
• Arts Programme (Cultural)
• Global / Development Education
• Community Volunteering Project
• Adventure / Challenge Project
Phase 4 – Volunteering in the community post expedition
On return each young person will be supported to engage in a volunteering placement and gain accreditation for this through the Duke of Edinburgh Awards Scheme. We hope to be working with Outset Youth Action, Locality Youth Forums and the European Voluntary Services scheme to access and support placements for young people from the programme. Alternatively the young people may want to lead and develop their own volunteering projects and would be supported to access funding to implement them. (eg. Vcashpoint, Youth Opportunity Fund etc).
Phase 5 – Follow Up and Review
This is a key aspect of the programme, particularly for this group of young people. The follow up residential will consist of revisiting the overseas experience and looking at how young people felt whilst in India and now on their return. It will also look to the future, looking at their volunteering projects, their ambitions and dreams, and support them with finding routes to achieving them. During this time we hope to be signposting them to other agencies and running a mixture of Workshops
Phase Six – Celebrations!
Naturally after all this fun, effort, challenge and excitement it is essential that we celebrate what’s been acheived. What this will look like still remains a mystery as it will be up to the young people to decide how they want to do this.
So now it begins………Phase One and it’s time to recruit the Staff!
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[...] Programme. I talked about this Targeted Youth Support programme more fully back in February in this post. Last Monday I went up to London on a quick return visit to get the final visas for the last few [...]