The Hearing Unheard Voices Campaign Awards - Shortlisted Groups
On 10th September the HUV steering group members looked at all the applications for the HUV awards. 120 applications for 8 different categories - competition was tough but the young people decided on a shortlist. Everyone who applied have acheived amazing things -if only we could give everyone an award! Winners have been decided and will be announced at the HUV Awards. The shortlisted applicants are:
Best local campaign
Magic beans
Magic Beans was a campaign to help people in the community interact with each other more, through creating a sensory garden for a group of residents in a local care home with learning difficulties.
They built relationships with local businesses, one of which offered them a £500 grant, with others offering them free and discounted items to use in the garden, and fundraised £400 themselves to pay for materials for the garden. They also updated an online blog to encourage the local community to get involved with the project. The team developed what to put in the garden, with support from community members and the care home, and they also included the residents input into the garden.
They created the sensory garden, which is still being used and loved by care home residents, who have since been using the garden much more than before.
MOBO
Ben Osu developed a campaign to bring the MOBO Awards 2010 to Liverpool, and through social media managed to bring the awards to his home city.
As well as bringing the famous music awards to Liverpool, the MOBO Academy was also created in the run up to the event. It compromised of events and talks from music industry professionals to pass on their knowledge and skills to musically-minded young people in the city.
The successful campaign resulted in £15 million revenue being brought into the city, as well as the local music scene being promoted across the UK.
Me 2 (Mencap)
Me2 is a campaign in Dudley, West Midlands to improve inclusion for disabled children and young people in play and leisure facilities.
Through their Young People’s Panel, they have inspected and interviewed leisure and play settings which serve disabled young people. They work with these services to help them achieve the Me2 Award, a kite-mark award offered to services that have good practice guidelines and are inclusive of disabled young people, in order to recognise, promote and celebrate inclusion for all young people.
Me2 has been successful in helping over 30 services in Dudley to achieve the Me2 award, offering disabled young people more choice in services and informing them and their parents of good quality, safe and welcoming services.
www.mencap.org.uk/what-we-do/our-projects/me2-award
Biggest impact
Stand against violence
This charity was started by Adam Fouracre, who’s brother was the 17 year-old victim the brother of a 17 year old murder victim. It focuses on reducing youth violence through education.
The charity has created a film about Lloyd’s story, that has been used in schools across the world to think about violence and its consequences. They also offer assemblies and workshops. Recently over 80 south-west 14-16 year old pupils got involved with workshops focusing on the issues of violence and its’ impact on others, with first aid and personal safety was also taught.
Feedback from both pupils and teachers who have been involved with the charity talk about the huge impact it has had on young people.
Love shouldn’t hurt
The Love Shouldn’t Hurt Project is a campaign that aims to change the culture of unhealthy relationships amongst teens. It is about empowering young people to become advocates for healthy relationships and stand against Domestic Abuse, through sessions in schools and youth clubs.
It is not just about raising awareness but it is about breaking the cycle of DV, so that young people that have grown up around DV begin to realise that there is a different way of doing things, that the model of relationship that they have seen hasn’t been right.
The project has reached thousands of young people, having gone into every secondary school in Canterbury and branching out around Kent, hundreds have joined the Facebook group and thousands have visited the website, which promotes and suggests ways of creating healthy relationships. A weekly slot on local radio is recorded with a selection of teenagers discussing teen issues surrounding healthy and unhealthy relationships, inspiring other young people to become advocates for healthy relationships.
SCAPPA
SCARPA Squad is a campaign that uses young people who used to go missing from home, and have since stopped and made positive changes to their lives, to offer support to young runaways.
These young people help workers to talk to runaways try to find alternatives to running away for them and how they were able to stop going missing from home themselves. As well as offering support, they also try to raise awareness on a local, national and international level about not only running away, but the factors contributing to young people running away, and ensure support services are a priority.
www.childrenssociety.org.uk/what-we-do/helping-children-1
Extra mile award
Disability awareness road shows
Joshua has led a campaign about increasing disability awareness. He did this by fundraising money to bring in a local charity, SPIDER-Y, to run a disability awareness roadshow in his school. He then set up an O2 Think Big project to run another roadshow in his school.
The amount of fundraising he has done for SPIDER-Y, a local disability sports charity, has greatly helped the charity, allowing it to provide more disability awareness as Joshua has helped to reduce costs for schools who want the roadshows.
Bexley youth council
The Bexley Youth Council has worked tirelessly on various initiatives they have set up. These include producing an Alcoshock DVD about the consequences of young people binge drinking, intergenerational work with elderly people to dispel stereotypes of young people, and organising a Police Connect conference.
The chair, Dwayne Burrell, and deputy, Robert Smith, have both gone the extra mile to show their dedication and motivation to the Bexley Youth Council. Dwayne has managed to keep the council, made up a 70 young people, afloat during a very difficult year with extensive government cuts and stay involved with all the youth campaigns, as well as volunteering with a refugee organisation and completing his final year of A-levels. Deputy Robert Smith has been dedicated to improving services around crime, and this year worked hard to develop a police panel event and produce a report on it.
http://www.bexley.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=4744
Save our EMA
The ‘Save Our EMA’ campaign by Dudley College Students’ Union aimed to inform students of the proposed government changes, combat the misinformation being publicised about students ‘wasting’ their EMA, to inform our local MPs of the impact such cuts would have on local young people and to raise as much awareness as possible about what EMA was and what it meant to students. With over 78% of the students receiving EMA, this was an important issue they wanted to tackle.
Students took part in petition signings, attend national demos, lobbied local MPs, attended meetings at Westminster to debate the issue, engaged with supporting Trade Unions and got maximum press exposure. All at the same time continually engaging more and more young people, local community and interested partners in the debate and fight to Save EMA.
The hard work of the Dudley College Students’ Union, as well as other similar campaigns helped to make sure that EMA only received a 66% funding cut, instead of the original 90% cut, and that the government runs consultation period with students about the new system.
www.dudleysu.org/campaigns/save_our_ema_fix_it_back_it
Most creative campaign
Life in My Shoes
Life in My Shoes is a London campaign aiming to change the attitudes and behaviour around HIV. Whilst there have been huge advancements in HIV medication, stigma and fear surrounding HIV+ individuals still continue to be a problem. They have gone beyond the facts about HUV and have instilled hoe and empathy, not fear and hate. The campaign is unique in tackling the stigma and attitudes about HIV, above giving the facts of HIV, to try and create a more understanding world.
Through a film based on the real stories of young people living with HIV and an in-school resource to promote open discussion amongst youth in classrooms and beyond, Life in my Shoes helps dispel common myths and stigma about HIV by engaging young people in a creative learning platform.
The film was created through the ‘Search for a Star’ competition. It involved young people competing for the lead role in the film by learning a short script and uploading audition videos to the website. Without knowing it young people were already learning HIV based facts hidden in the script.
S.T.E.V.e
S.T.E.V.e is a campaign by a group of young people from Sutton Coldfield, who wanted to encourage other young people in the community to lead a healthy lifestyle, after seeing that a lot of health advice for young people was patronising.
They created an interactive website with downloadable customised recipes, exercise tips and blogs on their own health challenges they had set. They also created several informational videos, which were put up on their website to educate other young people. Using the school radio station, facebook and putting articles in local newspapers, they managed to reach over 200,000 about their project. They also met with their MP and S.T.E.V.e was featured on his personal website.
www.wix.com/steve_envision/steve
Homeless not voiceless
This Barnardo’s project was set up by young people with experience of homelessness in North-East England who wanted to campaign and raise awareness about the difficulties of Youth Homelessness.
The young people set up the group and started with writing and producing their own film, Young and Homeless, they expanded to show this at film festivals and roadshows to key decision makers, gave presentations at youth events, created a homelessness rapping CD and organised petitions to MPs.
The young people involved overcame the difficulties they were facing and campaigned to raise awareness of youth homelessness and their campaign has also resulted in a development of a regional strategy for youth homelessness.
Most youth led initiative
Whiz-kids Hartlepool
This Whizz-Kidz Club made up of young disabled people who decided to campaign on the scarcity of public disabled toilets and the misuse of disabled parking spaces.
After choosing to campaign on these issues, the young people designed and carried out their campaign. They organised a day to raise these issues with local decision makers and businesses, inviting the Mayors, the council’s parking service and youth service and local supermarkets representatives. They gave presentations and talks and produced a leaflet to take away.
Through this, the council has offered them to become parking attendants for the day and go on patrol with a civil enforcement officer. The supermarket has also offered them time slots to supervise the disabled parking spaces in their car park.
Chris Hampton
Chris Hampton, 19, is the founder and leader of his campaign ‘Autism Don’t Panic’ which aims to raise awareness, dispel stereotypes, and inform people about the autistic spectrum and to support not only people having difficulties but also those who want more information around the conditions and the issues that can arise as a result.
Chris developed a website for people to access information on all conditions under the autistic spectrum including; Autism, ADHD, Aspergers and Tourettes, to help families, friends, and anyone wanting more information. Chris has now expanded his activities to include a support group for people to meet others and share their stories, listen to guest speakers, and have fun. Chris has also attended multiple events promoting his campaign work, most recently the Godiva Festival in Coventry where his stand was always busy with people seeking information and support.
Body and soul
Life in My Shoes is a London campaign aiming to change the attitudes and behaviour around HIV. Whilst there have been huge advancements in HIV medication, stigma and fear surrounding HIV+ individuals still continue to be a problem. They have gone beyond the facts about HUV and have instilled hope and empathy, not fear and hate. The campaign is unique in tackling the stigma and attitudes about HIV, above giving the facts of HIV, to try and create a more understanding world.
Young people have been involved in every step of the campaign and has given them the chance to speak out about their HIV status. To lead the campaign, the ‘Teen Spirit Board of Directors’ was set up to ensure the campaign remains youth focused.
Outstanding recognition
MEI international
Sophie Mei started campaigning in school, where she campaigned for equal rights and anti-discrimination, delivered peer education on sexual health and organised World AIDs Day fundraisers.
Since then, Sophie has gone on to set up MEI International Ltd, a global social enterprise which delivers dance workshops and drama activities to vulnerable people. It also has a media arm which provides media training and publishes Verita magazine, an online human rights magazine, using work from seldom heard groups of people and aspiring journalists. Sophie also writes about human rights issues for national press. She also campaigns for women’s rights and equality, particularly for LGBT, and anti racism.
She has given confidence to and inspired hundreds of vulnerable young people to start dancing and performing, as well as publishing human rights work internationally through Verita magazine.
Save our youth service
When young people in Rubery realised that the council was considering cuts to the youth service and the impact this would have, they stared up a campaign to ‘Save Our Youth Service’.
They have collected over 1000 signatures on a petition, staged a sit-in protest at the local youth centre, organised a march on the main high street, staged various more protests, attended a county council cabinet meeting, met with local decision makers and achieved local media coverage. Two young people, Yasmin Millward and Jade Shields, have worked particularly hard, meeting local media and decision makers, spoken at public meetings and even got the issue raised briefly in the House of Commons.
Trailblazers
Trailblazers is a young campaigners network run by young disabled people. They fight against the social injustices experienced by people living with muscle disease or a related condition to access mainstream opportunities, facilities and services.
They have carried out national investigations, high profile reports and campaigns on improving services and access for disabled people. They have taken part in over 100 national and regional media broadcasts to highlight their findings. They also set up and co-ordinate the first ever All Party Parliamentary Group for Young Disabled People in Westminster and are carrying out a 12-month inquiry into the issues raised in the young campaigners reports.
Their achievements include having airline company Easyjet remove their max 60kg wheelchair limit removed, cinemas holding meetings with them to improve inclusion and having 10 young people enter higher education as a direct result of reading one of their reports, Trailblazers University Challenge, which is now recommended by the National Union of Students.
Successful partnership campaign
The Haven project
The Haven Project is an early intervention and assessment mental health service that works in schools to identify and support young refugees and asylum seekers whose mental health may have been adversely affected by traumatic experiences both in their home country and also on their journey to the UK.
The project has developed services that provide young people with services such as art, psychodrama, and horticulture therapies. They have also recognised the need for them to have other resources such as information posters in their own language, an information film to highlight ways to deal with bullying and racism, and a poetry book in conjunction with the reader organisation to highlight the lives of asylum and refugee children.
To become the success it is, the project developed links with Liverpool LEA and partner schools, Liverpool PCT and CAMHS Commisioning Board and Merseyside Youth Association, Reader organisation, Sola Arts, Alder Hey Foundation NHS Children’s Trust and EMTAS, all of which have helped this project grow.
Verita
Verita magazine is an award-winning online magazine that explores and campaigns for human rights through sharing stories and experiences and delivering human rights news.
The magazine has contributors from both aspiring journalists and seldom heard people, giving them employable skills and boosting their confidence seeing their work published.
They are linked with the local newspaper’s website, The Star, which has 4 million hits per month. They also have strong links with charities that aim to create positive social change, such as Amnesty International; Alzheimers Society; Girlguiding UK; Marie Curie and Mind. Both these charities and local businesses use Verita Magazine if they have a story to tell, share a view or are looking for people to employ.
Road safety champs
This campaign aims to use peer education to increase road safety and reduce the number of young people injured whilst travelling. They have trained with West Yorkshire Police, Yorkshire Ambulance Service, Kirklees Road Safety Team Streetscene and the British Transport Police, before educating other young people.
They have written and produced two online viral videos, completed peer education sessions in schools and youth clubs, launched the Kirklees PSHCE Ed conference, consulted on a Yorkshire and Humber Road Safety ‘App’ initiative and kick started the ‘Pull the Plugs from Your Lugs’ pledge campaign with young people across Kirklees, now with over 200 pledges.
http://www.kirkleesyc.org.uk/projects/road-safety-champions/
Turning your life around
Worcester Acorns Hospice
Young people who go to Acorns Hospice for short breaks have set up a campaign to raise awareness of young disabled people’s rights and what they are capable of.
Campaigning about issues such as bullying, misuse of disabled parking, joining in social activities and accessing cinemas allowed them to speak up and stop relying on adults to create change. They have run a showcase event in Birmingham to raise awareness for other organisations about what issues young disabled people face, written articles and created campaign DVDs.
At the Acorns AGM, the young people gave a presentation to over 100 people and inspired a businessman attending to further fund the groups activities.
Katie Buckingham
Katie campaigns with Changemakers to raise awareness of mental health and challenge the stigma surrounding it. She collected over 200 young people’s perceptions about mental health issues. From this she has run workshops in schools and has created a resource pack to introduce young people to mental health issues and challenge the myths surrounding mental health. This pack has been launched to schools, youth workers and anyone else working with young people.
Not only has this campaign had an impact on a large number of young people, but it has massively helped Katie herself. Katie has Aspergers Syndrome and mental health issues, and rarely used to leave her house due to her conditions and low confidence. Katie massively challenged herself and lived up to this challenge leading this successful campaign, rather than accepting the negative stereotypes and stigma. She has developed her confidence so much and has gone on to deliver presentations to school classes and even the council’s Chief Executive and Heads of Services.
Imogen Barnard
Imogen has stood as a Dorset UK Youth Parliament (UKYP) candidate 3 times. One campaign she has fought for is the awareness of Young Carers, and making sure their voices are heard, they get the support they need and has ensured that this is a key campaign for the South West UK Youth Parliament.
She has also campaigned for a more positive image of young people in the media – being a young columnist in a local newspaper and a member of the South West UKYP ‘Sounds Positive’ media group. Whilst these are her main campaigns, Imogen also gets involved with others like disability awareness, and is a youth advisor at a local youth centre and member of the County Youth Council.
Imogen’s passion for her Young Carers campaign comes from her first hand experience as a young carer for her mum.
About The Project
- What Is HUV All About?
- HUV Launch Event
- Meet Us
- Local Influence Groups
- How To Get Involved
- Roadshows
- South West Roadshow
- West Midlands Roadshow
- North East Roadshow
- Hearing Unheard Voices Awards Report
- Hearing Unheard Voices Campaign Awards Photographs
- HUV Campaign Awards - Shortlisted Groups
- Young Campaigners Featured
