This Summer, we have a range of exciting opportunities for Rights Advocates to build their skills, speak to decision-makers and help us embed young voices throughout our work.
Take a look at the opportunities below to get a taste for what’s on offer. If you’re interested or just want to hear more, sign up to our info session on Tuesday 22nd June, 5:00pm, on Zoom by registering here.
Opportunity 1:
Youth voice in recruitment
Open to: Rights Advocates – especially if you have an interest in how organisations hire staff and why it’s SO important for young people to have a role in decision-making.
What’s in it for you? You’ll get a sneak peak at how the hiring process works, build your confidence to participate in spaces usually dominated by older adults, and potentially help us to hire new members of staff for the Youth Access team.
When: The training is made up of 2 sessions. The first explores the role of young people in recruitment processes, the second focuses on preparing you to recruit a specific member of staff. We won’t be recruiting for these key roles just yet, but part 1 of the session will be run towards the end of August/ beginning of September.
What:
- We want to make sure young people have a role in all of our decisions around who we hire so that we get the people who best understand young people and can stand up for your rights.
- In the future, Youth Access will be hiring new members of staff to fill a number of varied roles, so there’s potential for you to help us out with those decisions by taking part in these recruitment consultant training sessions.
- In these sessions, we’ll cover the basics around why it’s vital for youth charities to involve young people in processes and decision-making about who they hire. We’ll help you understand how the hiring process works and what you bring to the table. And, importantly, we’ll be working with you to help work out what we should be looking for in our staff
Opportunity 2:
Train the Trainer
Open to: Rights Advocates & Rights Advocate Alumni – especially if you are interested in developing new (or building upon existing!) facilitation skills by training other young people to become Rights Advocates.
When: Train the Trainer is made up of 2 sessions which will be run in August/ beginning of September. We’ll contact those who express interest in this opportunity at a later date to schedule the sessions.
What’s in it for you? You’ll be supported to develop your skills in workshop facilitation and build confidence to deliver training alongside similarly passionate and like minded young people around the country. This is a paid opportunity and you will receive monetary compensation for the Rights Advocate training sessions that you facilitate.
What:
- To ensure we are creating the most impact and reaching as many young people as possible with the Our Minds Our Future campaign, we want to build a team of Rights Advocates who are passionate about facilitating training and can be on hand to deliver training to future Rights Advocates.
- We ran our first round of Train the Trainer last year, and now have 2 brilliant Rights Advocates – Lizzie and Natalie, who have been equipping young people with the information and skills they need to kick-start their journey as a Rights Advocate and start growing the campaign with other young people in their local area.
- We are now offering a second round of the Train the Trainer opportunity to existing Rights Advocates. This training will equip you to facilitate Rights Advocate training and train up other young people who are interested in joining the movement.
Opportunity 3:
Introductory spokesperson training
Open to: Rights Advocates– especially Rights Advocates who want to speak up for their mental health rights on public platforms such as TV or radio interviews, panel discussions or parliamentary evidence sessions.
When and how long: The training takes 2 hours, with a little bit of homework on top. We’ll contact those who express interest in this opportunity with session dates and times. This is an ongoing opportunity that we will be running on a regular basis, so don’t worry if you can’t make the first session!
What’s in it for me: If you’re passionate about your right to better mental health care and want to take on public speaking opportunities to help drive change with Our Minds Our Future, this training will help you to build the skills and confidence to tell a compelling story about our movement. Not only will these skills support you in your campaigning journey as a Rights Advocate but are transferrable to campaigning work that you engage in, beyond Our Minds Our Future.
What:
- The 2 hour session will cover the basics of giving an interview, along with a recap on our core campaign messages. We’ll teach you some ‘golden rules’ for responding to questions, then give you time to practice with others, exchange feedback and work out how to share your story in a way that feels safe and comfortable for you.
- Note: This session offers an introduction to these key techniques and considerations, rather than an advanced training for managing difficult interviews. The opportunities we get for young people to speak are generally from friendly journalists or politicians who care about mental health and want to hear your story – so this training reflects that.
Opportunity 4:
Youth Access website development focus group
Open to: Rights Advocates & Rights Advocate Alumni – especially if you have an interest in digital/ website content, design and development. We are offering this opportunity to a maximum of 8 people – on a first come, first served basis. If there are more than 8 people interested, we will start a waiting list in case spaces become available.
When: We’d like to run the focus groups on Tuesday 6th July. To register your interest in attending this focus group, please complete this brief form.
What’s in it for me: This is an exciting opportunity for you to help shape and develop part of our brand-new website. This opportunity is part of wider journey: you’ll play a direct role in defining our new service directory, and you’ll also get the chance to test the website prototype before it is finalised. As a thank you for your time, you will also be given a gift voucher of your choice.
What:
- Over the coming months, we will be developing the service directory function on our current website to make it easier for young people to find their local support services.
- To make sure the new service directory is appropriate for young people, we would like to run a focus group to get your thoughts and feedback on what we can do better!
- The focus group will be run by Youth Access staff and a Website Designer.
- Your thoughts and feedback will be included in the design and development of the new service directory, and you will be able to see the exclusive concepts (draft versions) of the directory before they are shared with anyone else.
Opportunity 5:
Build a team of Rights Advocates in your local area
Open to: Rights Advocates & Rights Advocate Alumni – especially if you have an interest in building a local team of Rights Advocates.
When: We’ll be delivering Rights Advocate training later on in the year and want to make sure that our training promotion and outreach is targeted at young people in areas that our existing Rights Advocates want to build local teams.
What:
- Many Rights Advocates are the sole Our Minds Our Future campaigner in their local area and have expressed interesting in growing a local team of Rights Advocates so that they can connect with like minded young people and organise action as a collective.
- We can make this vision a reality by ensuring that Rights Advocate training in the futures is centred on recruiting young people in areas that you would like to build a local group.
- By signalling your interest in this form, you’ll let us know that you’re interested in us recruiting young people in your local area to join the campaign. We’ll get in contact with you in the coming months when we start to prepare for our next round of Rights Advocate training.
Opportunity 6:
Safeguarding leaders training
Open to: Rights Advocates & Rights Advocate Alumni – especially if you have an interest in building a local team of Rights Advocates, running events/hosting team meetings, or want to take part in other types of leadership roles (which might involve thinking about other people’s physical and/or emotional safety).
When: Depending on level of interest, we would like to run a handful of sessions by the end of the year.
What’s in it for me: You’ll gain key skills, tips and resources which will help you to recognise the signs of abuse or mental ill health in young people and how to escalate concerns, as well as learning how to carry out risk assessments for events and activities you’re planning to lead.
What:
- Safeguarding is a really important topic at Youth Access. We all follow strict guidelines to ensure we are looking after our staff and you!
- If you are interested in building your own Rights Advocates teams or being responsible for organising events in your local areas, it’s important that you know, and stick to, these safeguarding guidelines too.
- We want to ensure that you feel confident and empowered to take the lead on activities you’d like to do. We’ll always be here to support you, but we want to give you independence, too.
- Having a good understanding of safeguarding will also help you in the future, especially if you want to work in the youth sector.
