A £10 million difference for young people, by young people

Here at The National Lottery Community Fund we are committed to enabling young people to have a meaningful voice in communities across the UK. We want to embed youth voice in our own approach and decision making too. In Wales, we co-developed Mind Our Future, a £10 million grant programme with our Young People in the Lead Wales Advisory panel.

We spoke to Kimberley Mamhende, a member of the Young People in the Lead Wales Advisory Panel on getting involved with the panel, working with the largest funder of community activity in the UK, the co-development process, and making a lasting impact for young people in Wales:

“My name is Kimberley Mamhende, and I am part of The National Lottery Community Fund’s Young People in the Lead Wales Advisory Panel. I work for the Centre for African Entrepreneurship based in Swansea as a Business Development Manager. I joined the Panel at the time when I was leading a National Lottery-funded project to support young people from minority ethnicities with entrepreneurship opportunities.

I applied to the Young People in the Lead Wales Advisory Panel because it seemed like such an amazing thing to be a part of. I could see how it would benefit young people as well as help enable The National Lottery Community Fund to tackle issues that matter most to young people. That resonated with me, and it was a good opportunity to have my voice, and those of the communities that I represent, heard as part of the programme.

Meeting the rest of the panel and the staff from The National Lottery Community Fund during lockdown was an unusual experience. A lot of people were still getting used to working from home and doing everything online. However, even though there wasn’t that face-to-face aspect it was still a relaxed environment and we got to know each other very well, very quickly.

One of the first things that we did as a team was to start looking for the delivery partner, who ended up being ProMo Cymru and Ministry of Life. As a panel we were asked what we wanted to see in a support partner and this was that the partner shared our values and understood what it was that we and young people generally felt were important.

The first few months with ProMo Cymru and Ministry of Life as part of the research training were very intense. It was not an experience that anyone on the panel had really had before, but it was engaging and fun to be a part of.

We led the research and it was split into two parts: digital surveys and in-depth interviews. We spoke to young people across Wales on a one-to-one basis about things like their feelings throughout the pandemic and a number of other themes that have come out of the research. We also held focus groups with people and communities that we represent. For example, some people got involved in reaching out to LGBT+ groups or young people in schools and colleges where they had specific interest or expertise in those groups. My focus was young people from minority ethnic backgrounds.

When we started analysing the data with ProMo Cymru and Ministry of Life it was interesting to see what young people were saying. Even though we were interviewing a diverse range of young people there were a lot of common threads that were being raised as concerns.

Everyone from The National Lottery Community Fund, Promo Cymru and Ministry of Life has been incredibly supportive. What has been really nice is that everyone on the panel has been involved in some sort of youth advisory group or something like that, but working with The National Lottery Community Fund and the partners has given us an extra level of freedom to have our say and we have taken ownership of the development from the get-go. We have been allowed to be creative and not be limited with what we can do.

When we started, we didn’t expect to be quite as involved as we are. As the co-development process moved along, we all felt that we wanted to be involved throughout the whole process of Mind Our Future, including promoting the programme, assessment as well as decision making. In a way, being able to be a part of the wider process was a logical conclusion for us.

From there, the Young People Advisory Panel members have been lucky enough to get involved in other parts of The National Lottery Community Fund’s work. One instance of this was when Serena [another Young People in the Lead Wales Advisory Panel member] and I presented at the recent Communities Can online conference. It was fantastic to be able to share our work with a wide range of people from across the third sector.

As a panel we have also started buddying with Wales Committee members. We were in a place where we felt that even though The National Lottery Community Fund had co-developed the Mind Our Future funding programme with us and young people, that there should be further involvement of young people, and a youth voice, across all of its work. That’s where the idea of a buddy system with Wales Committee came from. It is very much a two-way process between the Young People Advisory Panel and Wales Committee. Whilst we are learning a lot from them and their experience, they too are learning from us and of the lived-experiences that young people have.

The work that The National Lottery Community Fund does is amazing – supporting people and communities to thrive is a fantastic philosophy. It’s all about people and communities identifying what’s important to them and building on their strengths. The National Lottery Community Fund is great at involving communities and to see the benefit that it makes is incredible, and the Mind Our Future programme is a perfect example of that. Other organisations can learn a lot from how it has involved young people and communities. By that I mean that it’s not just about involving young people, or any group of people in reaching a goal, it’s about letting young people take the lead in that activity, to take on the work, and to really take ownership of what is trying to be achieved.”

Mind Our Future is a £10 million programme with the aim of creating a mentally healthy and resilient future for young people in Wales.