Our inaugural Youth Advisory Board
This summer saw the conclusion of the inaugural Tutors United Youth Advisory Board! Across six months, 18 young board members – made up of current and former TU pupils – took up leadership roles in shaping our programmes, all while building confidence, communication and decision-making skills, as we ensure their voice has real influence in our organisation.
We wrapped up the six-month programme in July, with every board member presenting their recommendations to our CEO Amy Whitelock Gibbs and Tutors United's co-opted advisor on our impact and strategy committee Richard Crellin, to let us know where they feel our charity can improve and grow to better meet their needs and the needs of their families and communities.
We wanted to hear the thoughts of young people from across our programmes, and we're so grateful that families were able to join us from all over London and beyond, both in-person and online. We had residents from so many of our great partners participate, past and present – Poplar HARCA, Clarion Housing, PA Housing, Phoenix Community Housing, Lewisham Council Housing Services, Notting Hill Genesis, Metropolitan Thames Valley, and One Housing.
Alongside giving our young people a microphone to help us improve our programmes for them and their families, we also wanted to provide a creative learning and leadership opportunity to our young board members. The programme included six sessions, with focuses on:
🖋️ Designing and judging our Creative Writing Competition for pupils across all of our programmes
📚 Reviewing and improving our core curriculum
🏡 Brainstorming ideas for at-home learning resources that we could bring to life
🧑🧑🧒🧒 Discussing how to improve the pupil and family experience at Tutors United
🗣️ Building presentation skills to share their ideas to our leadership team
“One thing that has changed since joining the Youth Advisory Board is feeling that I can make a change, no matter what.”
We're so pleased with the feedback we have received from pupils and the facilitated learning we delivered to them in return, and we can't wait to implement what we learned from our young people.
A massive, massive thank you to PPL and their team for hosting us every month and for making the programme possible. A big shout out to our facilitating tutors throughout the Youth Advisory Board – Farhan Raheem and Hafsa Ahmad. And a huge well done to our very own Arran Wylde-Eccles and Racheal Olaitan for creating and running our first-ever Youth Advisory Board so brilliantly and for making sure all of our young participants' voices were heard.
