Community Youth Action

"Be the change you wish to see in the community"

The Community Youth Action programme gives you the opportunity to work together and make a difference. The project allows your voices to be heard and empowers you to bridge the current gaps, issues, and friction following last year's Grenfell tragedy.

Epic CIC is working in partnership with Talk for a Change and Paul Hamlyn to develop a youth-led programme to help young people become agents of social change within North Kensington developing skills around youth voice and dialogue at the same time as creating social capital.

As a result, young people will:

• Increase their ability and skills to manage difficult feelings and situations of conflict, particularly in the aftermath of the Grenfell disaster
• Learn techniques for communicating more skillfully in conflict situations
• Increase their understanding of how to build better relations within and between different communities and groups
• Develop their voice and agency by delivering social action projects within the local community
• Be provided with structured opportunities to deliver peer education sessions to other young people in the local community.

This programme is targeted at young people aged 16-19 from the following categories:

• Living and/or attending schools in North Kensington/around Grenfell Tower
• Evacuees of Grenfell Tower Disaster
• Survivors of Grenfell Tower Disaster
• Young people from the wider Community which includes those living in North Westminster, South Brent, North Hammersmith.

Outcomes of this programme are as follows:

1. Increased young people into sustained employment, education, and training: Young people’s learning on the programme will be accredited via AQA or similar qualification programmes
2. Young people increase their contribution to a safe community
3. Young people have improved health and wellbeing:

Work in progress

At present we have consulted with young people across The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea regarding the current conflict they see in the community, the origins of these issues, key influencers, how this affects the community and what can and should be done.

From this information, we have co-designed a social action project plan which consists of a range of training, planning, community engagement actions and results in a social action project which will be 100% created and run by young people.

Discussion with young people on what social action is to them 

Social Action Project Ideas (so far...)

Young people are very excited about the CYA programme and have begun developing potential project ideas, we have captured some of their thoughts below:

1. Sensory House - Creating a space for the community to express their emotions and release stress by accessing different rooms; ultimately bringing us together.

2. Conference for all - Running an intergenerational conference focusing on conflict resolution, a safe space to get know each other and create plans on how we can work together to rebuild our community.

3. Fashion show dinner - Running a fashion show expressing culture through design and bringing the community together with a final sit-down meal of various traditional dishes.

4. Community mural - Creating a piece of street art with local residents to depict what the community should look like and what people should be doing to help rebuild the North Ken community spirit.

5. Community cafe -  Hire a space (inc. pop up shops) as an open access area welcoming everyone in the community to talk, work, communicate and share.

Young people will be developing these ideas over the following weeks and leading up to the North Kensington Community Festival where they will consult with the local community and decide which project(s) they will be taking forward.

Important Dates 

In consulting with young people we have set out the below dates to move this project forward:

• ^19th June – 6-8.30pm at Canalside Centre, introductions, and team building activity. This is open to new young people interested in joining
• 21st June 6-8.30pm at Canalside Centre - as above
• 23^rd June 11am-4pm at Canalside Centre – Training on Conflict Resolution (Closed group - not open to new young people
• 24^th June 11am-4pm at Canalside Centre – Training on Conflict Resolution (Closed group - not open to new young people)
• 26^th June 6-8.30pm at Canalside Centre -  Community Conflict and Mapping Training  (Closed group - not open to new young people
• 28^th June 6-8.30pm at Canalside Centre – Finalise social action projects for consultation 
• 30th June 10am-7pm at Westway Sports and Fitness Centre - Consultation of Projects at North Kensington Community Youth Festival resulting in a clear choice of project to take forward