What makes an amazing project for young people?
We're fortunate to visit East Africa several times each year, to work with our partners in Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia and to find new partners to support. To make the most of our visits we pack a lot in, so over a two-week period we might visit over 20 organisations, all doing different but amazing work. This exposes us to an incredible array of projects and approaches to supporting young people.
Working out in Africa and away from daily life in London can also make you quite reflective. So during our last trip to Uganda, after being blown away by a visit to one organisation, I started thinking about what it is that makes a really amazing project.
This particular organisation, Breakdance Project Uganda (BPU), uses hip hop and dance as a tool to engage and empower disadvantaged youth in Kampala. We went to meet the leader Abramz one evening, at one of the sessions. What I expected was to sit in a room and watch a dance lesson led by a teacher with a small group of young people, and then to have a chat with some of them afterwards. What I didn't expect was to see a sea of people of all ages dancing outside as we approached one of the community centres where they work. The music, energy and sheer mass of people was overwhelming and you could immediately feel that this was something special. It was more than a project – it felt like a movement. At BPU, everyone is a teacher and everyone is a leaner. Kids were teaching teenagers, teenagers were teaching kids, 30 year olds were learning from both of them – everyone is valued and appreciated for who they are and what they can offer, no matter how big or small. What was also clear was how much everyone loved what they were doing. The sessions start at 5pm and go on for hours, and more people keep joining and performing as the evening goes on. It was clear that for many of these people this was their home and the people there were their family, and it was a privilege to be there and be part of it for the evening.
Pictured: Breakdancers at Breakdance Project Uganda
Afterwards, I tried to capture what it is that makes BPU, and so many of our partners’ work, so powerful. Of course, organisations are unique and you can't distil them down into a winning formula that equals a successful project. However, there are often three common threads between organisations that stand out for me, and when you get a combination of all three like you do with BPU, this can result in something pretty special.
At the risk of stating the obvious, organisations who engage young people in something they enjoy, tend to have a greater impact on them. If the activity is something that they would choose to do in their spare time, or that they would love to have the opportunity to try if they could, then half the battle is won. When young people continue taking part in a project because they want to rather than because they are told it will be good for them, they are engaged in a meaningful way and therefore benefit from it more. This is demonstrated by Fight for Peace, one of our partners who uses boxing, martial arts and fitness to engage some of the hardest to reach young people. Where other interventions have failed, Fight for Peace is incredibly successful at engaging these young people because the want to be there, learn how to box and get fit. Once they've built up a relationship, they can then start to support them further through educational training and mentoring.
Pictured: A Muay Thai training session at Fight for Peace
Most of us have seen or experienced school assemblies where an 'inspiring' speaker has been brought in to talk to the students. Perhaps it's about careers. The audience is made up of 200 year 12 and 13 students. The speaker is a 50 year old man who's career in The City has spanned over three decades. He's got a lot of wisdom to impart but people aren't listening. Why? Possibly because they can't relate to him. Bring on a speaker who's been to their school, just left last year and is talking about what their first job is like, and it's a different story.
What we often see is where organisations encourage young people to support other young people, the engagement is so much stronger. A couple of our partners who are a testament to this are Franklin Scholars, where Year 10 students tutor Year 7 students, and Balloon Kenya, where young entrepreneurs who have been through the Balloon Kenya programme and are now successfully running their own businesses train other young entrepreneurs on the programme.
Pictured: Young entrepreneurs from Balloon Kenya
Sometimes it can be hard to measure the impact of a programme on a young person, particularly if the focus is around building character traits or soft skills – things that aren’t necessarily as tangible as getting a job or gaining a qualification. But with some of our partners we've found that when their project culminates in an event or an end product which captures how far the young people have come, the impact is palpable.
Perhaps no organisation demonstrates this more than our partner The Big House, which works with young people who have been through the care system, providing them with a platform for them to participate in the making of theatre and to have their voices heard. Towards the end of the programme, they perform a play that has been devised from their stories to a public audience. Aside from this being an amazing way to showcase how they have developed, built confidence and skills and bonded incredibly as a team, this is a way for them to have this recognised and appreciated by people in a way that they can really see and feel.
Pictured: A scene from 'Babylon' from The Big House
Of course there's not just one way to run a great project and you can have an amazing project without these, but from our experience these are things that have often led to incredible impact on young people and have left us feeling truly inspired.
