SYC have renewed our Power of Youth Charter this Power of Youth Day! The charter shows our dedication and commitment to giving young people a voice and involving them in decision making across the organisation. We think it is integral to ensuring we offer the best possible support to young people and young carers.
The Power of Youth Charter is a campaign with the core message that young people must be empowered to be changemakers. They have the talent, energy and ideas to make a positive difference today: https://www.iwill.org.uk/organisations/the-power-of-youth/.
As an organisation, we stand by this charter and believe that young people should be involved with decisions that affect their lives and the communities in which they live. To show our continued commitment, we have renewed our own charter to highlight how we are involving young people within SYC. We will continue to update our charter annually!
Here is our commitment:
Power of Youth Charter: SYC Priorities 2023-24
https://www.iwill.org.uk/organisations/the-power-of-youth/
SYC signed up to the Power of Youth Charter in 2022 as part of our commitment to young people’s voice and influence. We place young people at the heart of all we do, and by establishing these priorities we are able to further develop and improve our practice. The priorities link to our values and mission.
1. Prioritise supporting young people to take social action
We will continue to develop our Young Carers Action Group who help run our organisation.
Young people will be the steering group for our three-year education project to identify what works for different groups of young people and young people from different backgrounds.
2. Open up our decision-making structures
We will continue to involve young people in running our organisation through participation in staff recruitment; our annual strategic planning; on funding allocation panels; through young trustees on our Board; and in planning and participating in our local and national campaign work.
We will improve links between our Board of Trustees and the Action Group by having a board member attend Action Group three times a year plus the annual planning day to ensure the strategic oversight of SYC is guided by young people and their views.
3. Work collaboratively with other organisations
We will continue to co-deliver our training and awareness work with young people and/or share their stories through their own videos, voice recordings and words.
We will continue to work collectively with Young Carers National Voice (YCNV) to empower and raise voices of young carers nationally including an annual campaign chosen and led by young people. We will look for funding to keep this work going.
We will work to improve how services are held accountable to young people by involving young people in six-monthly reviews of the city’s Carers Strategy Implementation Action Plan.
We will facilitate opportunities for young people to be heard by local MPs and the new All Party Parliamentary Group for Young Carers and Young Adult Carers (once it is operational), so they can directly influence national policy.
4. Evidence the benefits of youth social action
We will continue to measure the impact that our work has on individual young people who engage in social action with us.
We will gather more evidence on the change achieved through the work of SYC’s Action Group in our own organisation and the wider community (local and national).
5. Recognise and celebrate young people’s impact
We will continue to support young people to achieve accredited awards in recognition of social action they do with our organisation.
We will increase involvement of young people in our social media/campaigns.
We will publicise the impact of young people’s social action.
This charter update has been agreed upon by SYC Action Group and by the SYC Board of Trustees.
