HomeFundingProjectsTeam London Young Ambassadors

Team London Young Ambassadors

Greater London Authority
Grantholder

Supporting young Londoners to take part in schools-based social action.

Project information

£450,000

Grant amount

July 2014

Date awarded

July 2014 – July 2016

Project duration

London

Location

Project Detail

Project summary

Team London Young Ambassadors (TLYA) is the Mayor of London’s programme for engaging young people in social action through their schools.

Spirit of 2012 funded the Greater London Authority between 2014-16 to roll out the programme following its pilot year in 2013-14. Our funding supported the programme’s expansion to all state schools in London. Our grant accounted for one third of the total project funding, with match from Unilever of £362,000 and the Greater London Authority providing £500,000.

The project inspired young people in non-fee-paying schools across all London boroughs to act on local issues and get volunteering – both in their schools and in their communities. Issues that young people addressed included homelessness, bullying, food poverty, food waste and community building.

The project did this by offering individual school assemblies, workshops and follow-up activity, together with large-scale youth summits and an annual ‘We Day’ flagship event. Schools were given interactive handbooks introducing students to social action, and could take part in an awards scheme recognising the volunteering efforts of pupils. Schools were also supported by Borough Ambassadors – adult volunteers recruited and trained by Team London – who helped students and teachers identify volunteering projects in the local area.

By the end of Spirit’s funding period, 80% of schools in London were taking part.

Since Spirit of 2012 funding ended, TLYA has remained an integral part of London’s volunteering and social action offering for young people. It has been matched funded as part of the National Lottery’s #iwill Fund, and is delivered by Volunteering Matters.

Impact & Learning

Key learnings

The GLA had huge ambitions for the programme to reach every state school in London, as well as schools in the independent and special needs sectors. They did not quite meet that target as some schools just did want to engage and had their own social action programmes that they were committed to.

This was one of Spirit’s first consciously social action focused projects (the wording had really only just started to be used) and we learnt a lot about the value of youth social action as a framework for youth engagement. Youth Social Action has become a core part of the engagement offering for young people over the last ten years, and it’s interesting that the young people were working on the same issues 10 years ago as we saw in much later projects like Inspire 2022, for example homelessness and food poverty.

Identifying Y5 and Y9 as areas where the curriculum might allow some social action and then broadened it out in some schools to include other year groups worked well with the schools, as did the prize of being invited to the We Day celebrations at Wembley. There was a high degree of reward built into the project – the We Day celebrations included international celebrities and was seen as a real and very desirable reward for the young people that took part. There were also ceremonies with the then London Mayor and his celebrity ambassador for the programme.

990

schools

took part in the programme – 688 had interactive assemblies, and 277 had assemblies and workshops. This reached 404,141 children and young people, of which 107,985 were given a chance to volunteer.

68%

young people

of young people were more likely to plan for their future career or higher education.

88%

young people

of young people developed stronger communication skills.

87%

young people

of young people demonstrate more consideration of local and global issues in their everyday life choices, including kindness, recycling and energy conservation.

86%

young people

of young people felt a greater connection to their local community.

70%

teachers

of teachers felt that the Young Ambassadors programme had encouraged previously disengaged students to become more involved.

81%

teachers

of teachers were more likely to integrate content about the local community into regular classroom activities.

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