Portsmouth: A Young Changemakers City

Description:

The Portsmouth: A Young Changemaker City Project aims to develop Portsmouth into a place where young people have the power, influence and platforms to create change regardless of their background or upbringing. The cross city and cross setting programme also focuses on working with 5 schools to provide a range of platforms and interventions for young people to explore power, learn how to leverage it and drive change. The project is split into 3 main areas.
 
The Portsmouth Student Leaders Fellowship
The fellowship is an intensive, 6 month experience, which aims to incubate 30 of the city’s current or aspiring student leaders to further develop their leadership skills and to support them with designing and delivering their own campaign to influence decision makers and people of power within the city. The programme includes 4 immersive and themed weekends which kickstart with a team building residential, personalised support check ins with each of the young people, opportunities to meet local campaigners, councillors, MPs and leaders from different industries, plus a trip to Parliament. The fellowship 
will give the young people the skills, knowledge and networks to understand, influence and build power.
School Support
The school support aspect of this project involves working with young people, teachers and youth work professionals to develop a toolkit to help individual schools and community groups implement democratic ideals into day-to-day life for young people. This toolkit is then used as a collaborative tool between us and senior leaders within our 5 schools to develop and implement an action plan to enhance their youth voice culture and practice and ensure democratic principles are enhanced throughout the school community. 
 
Changemaker Days
Each school also gets the opportunity for us to deliver a ‘Changemakers Day’ to either a group of students or a whole year group. This is an immersive day-long experience exposing young people to democracy, power and influence, culminating in a live Q&A/debate with local decision makers. Young people come away from the day feeling inspired to want to take action in the future and the principles of driving social change in their communities.