Young people launch Chances for Change workshop with Buttle UK
Over the last year, we’ve been working with a group of six young people who have received Buttle UK grants to co-create a workshop for our corporate partners. “Chances for Change” aims to help our corporate sponsors better understand the experiences of the children, young people and families that Buttle UK supports through its grants. The workshop also encourages supporters to reflect on their own corporate practices and how they consider experiences of poverty and crisis both internally and externally.
Through a set of activities that we have co-designed with young people, workshop participants are put in the shoes of a young person experiencing crisis and financial hardship. By working through the decisions they have to make on a day-to-day basis, participants realise the strains that poverty places on children and young people, and the difference that a grant from Buttle UK can make to their lives.
Young people were involved in every stage of creating the workshop, from deciding its initial aims and objectives, to agreeing the session plan and format of the workshop delivery. Through a series of online and in-person workshops, the young people decided what they wanted workshop participants to feel and take away from the session, designed activities to help them achieve these objectives, and approved the content and design of the workshop materials.
We piloted the Chances for Change workshop with one of our corporate partners in November, co-delivering the session with one of the young people involved in its development. The young person who joined helped to introduce the workshop and explained the background to its creation. They also ran activities throughout the afternoon.
The feedback we received from workshop participants was incredibly positive. They found the workshop activities powerful and moving, and said that it brought home the reality of families struggling to afford essential items that many of us take for granted. They also appreciated having a young person as a workshop facilitator as they brought many of the issues to life, further enhancing the workshop’s lasting impact.
We plan to run the Chances for Change workshop with more of our corporate partners in the coming months. For more information, contact coproduction@buttleuk.org.