Recruiting and training Young People (16-24) across the city who will lead their own community projects to help their local community recover from the pandemic’s effects.

Community Responders is a project designed to put young people at the heart of community action. The project is designed to give autonomy to young people in recording and presenting their voices, the challenges in their daily lives, and issues facing their local communities, and their thoughts on what could be done to improve things and provide a legacy of change and improvement which can be extended further. Guided by Element's expertise, young people will be encouraged to devise social action projects that they feel are important to them and their communities. Within the broad values and mission of Element Society, there is every intention to ensure that the project is young person led, delivered and evaluated.

How can I get involved?

Be a Community Responder

If you would like to become a Community Responder or have a group of young people you would like to support to become Community Responders you can download our training package. This package is designed so that you can learn the key skills to being your own project. You can work on the independently, or use the session plans to deliver them to a group. 

Download the resource pack here

If you would like Element to deliver this training for you please email [email protected]
We offer can this to schools (Y11-13), colleges, any organisation that works with young people, and employers with employees aged 16-24. 

Other ways to get involved

You can get involved by:

• promoting us
• offering your support in training resources for our Community Responders
• supporting our Community Responders with their projects.

To get involved, email the CR team at [email protected]

Projects we're helping to launch 

Young people have come to us with a number of exciting project ideas that are currently in the processes of planning, designing and soon to be launching. 

These projects include 

• Inclusivity Project - this project is designed to get workshops into schools based around inclusivity, such as gender equality, racism and classism.
• Running for Mental Health - this project encourages people to get out in their local community on their own and as part of a group to go running, with the aim to improve mental wellbeing. 
• Overcoming Anxiety for Students - this project is a how-to guide on techniques to manage anxiety, it is aimed at university students.
• Art for Patients - this project aims to get art workshops to in-patients in hospitals, where they are often lonely and isolated with little to do. 
• Community Planter - this project is about getting the community together to do something green, this will have benefits for the community, the environment and for mental wellbeing. 
• Cleaner City Centre - this project hopes to tackle the little problem in the city centre by trying to get signs up deterring people from dropping litter, and letting them know where the nearest bin is. 

Successes so far

The project has now completed its planning and preparation stage. We worked with a steering group that directed the next stage of the project. We have had a packed programme of training workshops over the February half term and Easter Holidays. We are also currently offering our training to schools and organisations as restrictions lift. We recently delivered the training to a special school in Doncaster and are excited to see what project they choose to create. 

Watch this space! The team are really excited about this, as Tashinga tells us:

This project is all about youth empowerment, young people inspiring other young people and young people being equipped with the knowledge and resources to be able to make a positive impact on their communities. We see a definite need for this project especially during these tough times we are all facing and we are so excited to see the results in a few months.

You can find Half-Term and Easter training resources here. 

This project wouldn't have been possible without the support of The National Lottery. Find out more about how they support us.