After last year’s very successful and rewarding experience we are looking forward to hosting a further cohort of young people during their final phase, social action, of National Citizenship.
This means that during social action the young people will utilise the skills they have developed in the earlier phases to create positive change within their own community. We are hosting these young people for two weeks from 23 July 2018 at our offices in Commerce House, Lincoln. We will be asking them to look into stigma and discrimination and how this might impact on young people, particularly around well-being and mental health. This, of course, is a massive subject and we will only offer this as a guide. How they tackle this and what aspects they look into more deeply will be their choice.
We will be visiting the National Holocaust Centre at Laxton, Nottinghamshire, where we will join with their staff to look in some detail at the many groups who were persecuted. Over the next few days we will be hearing stories and having expert input from Think2speak about sexual health and HIV, Young Addaction, exploring how addiction can affect our lives, P3 whose mission is to improve lives and communities by delivering services for socially excluded and vulnerable people to unlock their potential and open up new possibilities and Healthy Minds who provides emotional wellbeing support to children and young people up to 19 years.
The group will spend the rest of their time drawing conclusions from what they have heard and testing the views of the wider community. Armed with all this information they will then have an opportunity to present this to an invited audience of people who have a significant interest in the subject and who can take away the learning. This is a unique opportunity for the young people to present first-hand feedback on their findings and also for those hearing it, to be able to network with others with similar interests and professions.