Our Youth Board
In October 2022, we established our Youth Board, made up of 15 young Londoners aged 16-24 from across the capital. Many have been or still are participants of our programmes, whilst others joined to represent the voices of their peers and to influence the support the charity is able to provide.
We have a Youth Engagement Diversity Pledge, which we co-designed with our Youth Board to articulate the ways we would include them in organisational decision-making and the types of opportunities we would engage them in.
We inform, consult and co-create with our Board as a whole and with individual members. We engage them in governance, communications and programme development. We report quarterly on engagement levels to our Board of Trustees.
What's been happening with the Youth Board?
The Intersect
The Intersect is an exciting new podcast made and produced by our Youth Board, discussing the real-life overlaps of the biggest issues facing young people.
Basma, a member of The Intersect production team, speaking about the podcast: “We all had a common goal of ensuring young people’s voices are heard and we thought that a podcast run by young people would be the best way to express this. The podcast is something that the Youth Board values and believes will have a huge impact on young people all around the UK. We’d love to see the podcast reaching and helping as many young people as possible”.
In Episode 3, our Youth Board hosts, Ya’Eesh and Ismail are joined by Shoshanna Davis, founder of The Fairy Job Mother, an online community helping 20,000 young people and Mustafa Hussain, a master’s student and founder of podcast, The Backstory. This engaging conversation explores education and mental health. They share their lived experiences, give advice to students and show how young people’s struggles in education are not isolated.
What's the biggest challenge facing young Londoners right now?
We asked members of our Youth Board to tell us what some of the biggest challenges young Londoners are currently facing.
This is what they had to say.