Violence Affecting Young People Network

On the 9th of April, I attended a wonderful event organised by London Youth with my colleagues in our Participation team. It was a networking event about violence affecting young people which is the second one that the organisation has done since Covid-19 .

Seeing different organisations coming together was amazing so we can work together to fix these issues and also just to talk and address what exactly those issues are.

My lovely colleague Alex did an excellent presentation which was just a taster session from our group work programme on boundaries . 

We then worked on the activity around boundaries in small groups which was writing acceptable boundaries inside the circle and unacceptable ones outside of the circle. It was nice to talk about something that is not spoken enough in society and also how most boundaries have to be pushed to be found and then be enforced.

We also had a fantastic speaker, Dr Ron Dodzro, who spoke about "the life of a top boy" - how labelling young people’s feelings and thoughts may affect them and also that the stereotypes around a top boy should and needs to be challenged - believing the young person is the expert of their own life and knows the solutions to their own problems. 

The event definitely pushed the current problems of society to the surface and got me thinking about how governmental policies and work influence those who are living the life of a "top boy" and what solutions need to be put in place so we can overcome this national crisis.

Thank you to London Youth for hosting the event, we look forward to continuing the conversation.

This diagram shows us a young person's network- the people around them in their daily lives i.e friends, family.

These systems should and need to work together so the young person may flourish and become the best version of themselves.

Blog by: Abianda's Operations and Admin Intern