Our community spaces matter. They’re where we are free to be ourselves, to meet and share ideas with others, and places help shape our identity.
During the pandemic, we learnt a lot about social action as a country. Many of us saw that our actions, big and small, helped vulnerable people around us in tangible ways – whether that was shopping for elderly neighbours, displaying rainbows on windows to raise morale, or donating to food banks. Many more people (children and adults) discovered that they too were capable of making a difference.
As human beings our communities are important to us. We rely on social contact with others for support, advice, entertainment, and mental wellbeing. Our community spaces play a vital part of this – being able to escape to a playground, sit in the library, exchange views on the high street or walk by a river are all important contributors to how we feel about ourselves and others.
During lockdown our community spaces became even more precious, however these places often do not feel welcoming, or safe, for children and young people, and so they feel excluded or reluctant to access them.
This free, one-hour CPD certified online training course is an introduction to using social action to improve community spaces, and aims to support adults working with groups of children and young people to help them make positive changes to the places where they live, in order to make them more welcoming and accessible to all.
Course Structure:
- Lecture 1: What is social action?
- Lecture 2: What do we mean by ‘community spaces’?
- Lecture 3: Who benefits from young people’s social action in community spaces?
- Lecture 4: What goes into an effective social action project? Sharing good practice.
- Lecture 5: A framework for your social action projects: Young Citizens Make a Difference Challenge.
- Lecture 6: Test what you’ve learnt.
- Lecture 7: Community spaces organisations and other sources of support.
- Lecture 8: What will do you now with your learning?
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