Embedding youth voice in our funding: an interview with our young decision makers, Tia and Rachael
Earlier this month, Tia and Rachael – two of The National Lottery Community Fund’s Youth Voice Advisors – joined the UK Fund’s decision-making panel for the first time as part of our commitment to ensuring that we’re funding projects that aim to create longer-term, transformational change by helping children and young people to thrive.
As decision-making panel members, Tia and Rachael had the opportunity to share their lived experiences with the group and help funding colleagues assess applications based on whether they had strong evidence of youth involvement. While we as a funder are committed to embedding youth voice in everything we do, Tia and Rachael’s expertise was particularly important for the UK Fund, which focuses its grants on organisations that help children and young people use their voice to influence change.
On their involvement, Danielle Walker Palmour, board member of The National Lottery Community Fund and a fellow member of the UK Fund’s decision-making panel, said: ‘Already, in just one meeting, Tia and Rachael have had a huge impact. They facilitated some really good quality, nuanced conversations about youth voice, and really encouraged the panel to think about how we as a funder can drive systems change by considering things like: what are the systems young people are most engaged with? Is it school, their immediate community, or a broader system? They’ve encouraged us all to reflect on what system change really looks like, and how small changes now could have ripple effects in the future. It’s been a pleasure having them with us today and I’m looking forward to seeing their impact spread further in the coming months’.
Joanne Rich, Head of Youth Voice at The National Lottery Community Fund, said: ‘Our Youth Voice Advisors bring a wealth of experience having worked with us for a number of years. All their hard work has led to the UK Fund focusing on projects that can evidence strong youth voice in their applications – which is a real game changer. It’s so important for us to have youth voice at the heart of this fund – from assessments to decision making, our Advisors help keep us accountable and remind us to make the right decisions that will have a lasting, positive impact on future generations’.
We had the pleasure of interviewing Tia and Rachael immediately after the decision-making panel ended. Read our latest blog to find out more about their youth voice journeys so far, their role on the panel, and their advice to young people looking to get involved in youth voice initiatives themselves.
Hi Rachael and Tia! Please introduce yourself.
Rachael: My name is Rachael, and I am one of the Youth Voice Advisors for the Fund and am also a UK Fund panel member.
Tia: I’m Tia-Zakura and I am a Youth Voice Advisor and a UK Fund panel member.
Tell us a bit about your youth voice journey to date. What’s inspired you?
Rachael: I started my youth voice journey a long time ago, way back in 2013-2014. The reason I got involved with youth voice was, as a young person myself, I realised that there were a lot of barriers for young people – we weren’t in the room with decision makers, and I wanted to be a part of that change and build a solid foundation for young people to get involved in the decisions that affect them and their lives.
My original inspiration was my very first youth worker. His name was Chris and he kind of helped me as a young person find my voice and my passion. But my biggest inspiration now would be the countless young people across the country. I’m passionate about being a strong representative for them and want to use my voice to elevate them.
I’m also incredibly inspired by Joe Rich, Head of Youth Voice at the Fund. She’s a great mentor and a huge inspiration for me.
Tia: So I started my youth voice journey when I was around 10 years old. I was involved in a project that didn’t go very well, and like a lot of young people felt negatively affected by it. I didn’t want that to happen again and so, with the help of my parents, I set up a youth board in one of the organisations involved and really just found a passion for it. I was super invested and from there it just kind of spiraled for me, and I started getting more and more involved in different boards, different initiatives.
As I grew into adolescence I found that it was something at the core of my ethos and my beliefs. I’ve always been a very vocal person – always liked to talk – so I just felt like I wanted to bring other young people up and be able to amplify their voices as well.
In terms of what inspires me, I think it goes without saying that I’m massively inspired by my dad. He works in the youth sector and he’s done so much for young people, specifically those from marginalised and ethnically minoritised backgrounds. So I think I get a lot of my passion from him.
I’m also inspired by the young people I get to work with who – like myself – maybe didn’t think that youth voice was the space for them, but now they’re really stepping up and making themselves heard. It’s a great reminder of why I do what I do and keeps me inspired whenever I meet other like-minded young people.
Tell us a bit about the different roles you have had since joining the Fund.
Rachael: Back in 2020, I joined the Fund as a member of Young People in the Lead. That was an advisory panel where we’d work with organisations and youth projects to advise them on what good youth engagement or youth involvement looks like.
From there, I kind of transitioned into sitting on decision making panels, starting with the Million Hours Fund back in 2023. There, I offered my input as a young person into which projects we should fund, and which looked like they’d best serve the interests of young people regionally and nationally.
Now, I sit on the Youth Voice Advisor panel to provide my input on peer reviews and grant applications under the UK Fund. My main role is to ensure that applications demonstrate good youth involvement, as this is super important when developing projects and initiatives that serve young people. They need to be involved in the process for the outputs to be valuable to them.
Tia: So with the Fund, I initially started out with the Youth Voice Wales team. I joined at the end of the Mind Our Future programme so was more involved with the evaluation and feedback aspect of that. From there, I was recruited as a Youth Voice Advisor on the UK Fund, where there’s a real focus on youth voice in particular.
How do you think your contributions have impacted the Fund?
Rachael: I think our impact has been recognised across the Fund, especially when it comes to grant making and making funding decisions. Funding officers are really factoring youth voice into their decision making now, which is great to see.
For example, Funding teams now pay really close attention to the youth voice sections in grant applications and make decisions based on how strong the youth voice element is. All that stems from all the work that we have done to platform the importance of youth voice within the Fund.
Tia: I think our contributions, specifically through the Youth Voice Advisor work, have had a real impact on how funding colleagues have evaluated applications. I came up with a bit of a framework on how we could really measure youth voice in applications, so for example a bunch of different statements that would be rated based on the lived experience of the Youth Voice Advisors. We’ve all had very unique experiences of what good youth voice and bad youth voice looks like, so we’re quite good at telling when things are authentic and when they aren’t. So the framework I created is a way for us to really interrogate how authentic the youth voice element is in grant applications.
We’ve also developed a bit of a training package, which was initially just for the UK Fund panel members but is now being rolled out to England staff as well as the Country Committees, which is amazing because it means our impact is spreading even further across the Fund.
I think sometimes youth voice can feel a bit like a tick-box exercise, but it really doesn’t feel like that at the Fund. Our advice is taken seriously and the work we’re doing is being embedded across everything the Fund does, which is great to see.
Why do you think it’s so important to have young people involved in decision making?
Rachael: I think it’s really important to have young people in the room because at the end of the day, you can’t make informed decisions about young people if they aren’t involved. They know best what they need, they know what they need more of in terms of support and services, and many of them have lived experience which is invaluable. If they’re not in the room where decisions are made, how can you make the best decision for them? You simply can’t.
Tia: When we’re talking about grant making and funding, the decisions we make have a direct impact on young people across the UK. If we don’t have young people represented on our boards, or on our decision-making panels, then how can we confidently say that their experiences are being taken seriously?
A lot of the time, you’ll have people making decisions on behalf of young people when really, those decisions won’t affect them, because they’re not part of that community. That makes it really hard for them to make informed decisions. I’m 20 years old, so I know what’s going on through my own lived experience and the experiences of my peers, and I think that makes a huge difference because I can give a clear picture of what it’s like to be a young person in today’s world, and what we need to thrive.
What would you like to say to other young people wanting to get involved in Youth Voice?
Rachael: My top piece of advice would be don’t be afraid to speak up. I know it can be really intimidating being the only young person in a room full of senior decision makers, but they want to hear what you have to say. So don’t be afraid to share your opinions and make yourself heard, because you matter.
Even if you think what you have to say isn’t relevant, someone will get something valuable from it. So my main advice would be to advocate for yourself and speak up.
Tia: I would say you’re already doing it! The fact you’re considering it and speaking up is a great example of what youth voice is in practice – it’s just about taking it to the next level. Initially you might feel like it’s not for you – I didn’t picture myself in this world at first as I thought it was super corporate! But what I’ve found is that it’s the opposite, and there are plenty of people out there who are happy and willing to listen to what you have to say.
Remember, your perspective is so important and valuable – and there are opportunities out there for you to represent hundreds of people with the same lived experiences as you. So be bold, be brave, and be authentic – your space at the table is just as important as everyone else’s.
About the UK Fund
The UK Fund offers larger amounts of funding for existing projects. We’ll fund projects that help bring diverse communities together. From July 2024 we’ll also fund projects that help children and young people use their voice to influence change.
All projects must:
- benefit communities across the UK (by working in different places, or by sharing learning between countries)
- scale up their impact by expanding their work (by helping more people, or doing more for people they already work with)
- support people experiencing poverty, disadvantage and discrimination
- help make significant changes to services or systems that affect people’s everyday lives.
And meet one of these aims:
- improve relationships between people with different life experiences
- help people and communities who find it difficult to meet face-to-face to make meaningful connections online
- help people from all backgrounds to influence the future of their communities
- help children and young people facing specific challenges change the systems that affect them
- help more organisations to involve and listen to children and young people.
The application deadline for the UK Fund is ongoing. To find out more, visit the UK Fund webpage.