The poverty fighters

Loss
and
Idealism III
Barbara Millar on the work of Youth End Poverty Dundee, the first group to be named Young Scot of the Year

The winning group. Photograph by Islay McLeod

There was nothing modest or self-effacing about the group's ambitions. They had booked the Caird Hall, one of the biggest and most high profile venues in Dundee. Then they sent out the invitations and took to the streets to spread the word. It paid off. On 1 December last year the group staged the biggest youth-led World Aids Day event ever seen in Scotland, bringing together a government health minister, myriad health professionals, political activists, overseas supporters, students and local people, culminating in a candlelight vigil. And they did it all in under three weeks.
     Youth End Poverty (YEP) Dundee, winner of this year's Arnold Kemp Award for the Young Scot of the Year, held its first training weekend in November 2008 and it was there that project coordinator and founder, Nick Henderson, dropped the bombshell that the first task of the newly-formed group of 11 volunteers, students and unemployed young people from Scotland, Poland, Sweden and Germany, would be to plan, set-up and run a major event for World Aids Day.
     'I wanted them all to get involved, right from the off, in something large, visible and open to everyone,' says Nick. 'It was all rather daunting,' adds 22-year-old Piotr Dorda, a third year business economics student at Dundee University and one of the YEP group members. 'But, perhaps rather to our surprise at the time, we achieved it.'
     Nick, an American Studies/International Relations student at Dundee University, set up the project following his participation in a joint Oxfam/Scottish Youth Parliament initiative – 'Roars Not Whispers' – which provided training for young people who wanted to make changes in their communities.
     He describes YEP as 'more of a concept than a structured organisation'. It's about young people coming together to tackle poverty at many levels, he explains. 'A YEP group could be set up in a street, school, town or country. And it can do whatever you want it to, from raising money for other charities to helping other young people in your community get into employment or education. Being involved with YEP means you could be creating, developing and running your very own project that will make a real difference to other people’s lives.'

In July 2008, YEP received a £10,000 grant from the Big Lottery Fund's Awards for All in order to establish the Dundee project. Much of the cash is being used to fund three training weekends which will, essentially, equip the volunteers with the skills, knowledge and confidence they need to get involved with existing organisations or charities, or to set up and run their own projects, tackling poverty and inequality. YEP will also support participants to get into further education, training or employment.
     'As long as the participants are enthusiastic and really want to make a difference to ending poverty, either locally, nationally or internationally, we provide all the training and knowledge that they need, including how to get funding,' says Nick. 'After the training, the participants can either work with others on a joint project or take something on themselves. Some people come to the training weekends with an idea of a project they would like to develop. Others wait until the training is completed before making a decision about what to do next.'
     Piotr and two of his colleagues have an idea they want to follow through. 'We want to make a difference to those families who come from Poland – which is where we are all from originally – to Dundee to study or work, and whose children are finding it difficult to fit into local schools,' he explains. 'This may be because of language difficulties, or other cultural barriers. We want to find ways of helping these children integrate and feel happy in their schools, whether these are primary or secondary schools. Initially, we will be working with Polish families, but we would like to expand this to work with other nationalities later on.'
     Other group members are developing ideas such as offering young people letter-writing skills practice, setting up self-respect workshops for schoolchildren and a 'politics of poverty' project which, among other things, will involve young people attending MPs’ surgeries.
     Nick stresses the importance of 'doing the ground work first'. This is where the training comes in, he says. The first weekend was about getting to know each other in a safe environment. The second weekend focused on group work, with members learning to use various participatory methods to facilitate discussions. Good practice in this area is of paramount importance, he points out. 'Bad practice can kill things completely.'
     YEP can also help its volunteers to gain accredited qualifications for the work they do. For instance, Youth Achievement Awards at platinum level are the equivalent to an Advanced Higher. 'YEP isn't just about improving the life chances of other people,' Nick says, 'it is about helping to make the very most of our volunteers too. With our network of activists and organisations around the world, we can help volunteers find opportunities that could change their lives.'
     His aim for the immediate future is ambitious. He hopes that, by the end of 2009, YEP Dundee will have achieved charitable status and will also have raised sufficient funds to support some full-time, paid posts, as well as a tranche of full-time and part-time volunteers. 'We need to establish some real professionalism in order to be able to offer continual training and to help volunteers' ideas come to fruition,' he says.
     He intends to spend his final year in Dundee before graduating making sure that YEP Dundee will go from strength to strength. Then he plans to move elsewhere, probably within Scotland, to start more YEP branches.
     A year ago, he would not have been able to consider appearing on such a platform, he admits. 'The change in me has been immense. I was just a typical student. I had no experience of activism, although I always felt I wanted to do something but didn’t know how to go about it. I just needed to find the right opportunity and, when I did, it changed my life, as well as improving my research skills and my writing skills. We want to help other young people through YEP, especially those who feel marginalised and isolated and have little self-esteem. YEP can turn them into activists, by giving them the confidence and the skills to challenge whatever it is they feel is holding them back, whether it is discrimination or poverty.'
     Besides the two YEP branches in Scotland and South Africa, there are associated networks of young people and national representatives in more than 100 countries, including Uganda, where YEP is involved in helping to establish a YEP bank, a micro-finance institution, and in Georgia, where YEP volunteers will teach in an orphanage and learn from the young people there. 'The internet has made it incredibly easy to stay in touch with others in different places, but we still believe in going to a place and seeing and experiencing it for yourself,' says Nick. 'This can have an incredible and profound effect.'

[click here] for Nick Henderson on the ideas behind Youth End Poverty