Youth Workin' It

Consultancy and Resources for Youth Workers and Organizations Worldwide

2 Free Session Plans About Children’s Rights – Hidden Gem #5

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Children's rightsHere’s the 5th installment of our hidden gems – previous posts that you might have missed the first time.

2 Free Session Plans About Children’s Rights

We think children’s rights are extremely important and that it’s well worth organizing youth work sessions that explore this issue.

This isn’t just because your young people get to learn more about what rights they have for themselves, but it also gives them an opportunity to learn more about the rights – or lack of them – that other young people have worldwide.

So today we have two Hidden Gems rather than one – a couple of different session plan ideas where you can help your youth learn about children’s rights.

You can find session one here and session two here.

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Show Your Community What Young People Are Made Of

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Community Young PeopleWe all know that the media, adults and society in general have a low opinion about a lot – if not most – of the activities of young people. Why not spend a session (or a few) designing posters for around your local area focusing on the great things that young people do.

You might also enjoy trying your hand at green graffiti, although check with your local government first – you don’t want bad press about good young people!

Volunteering Matters in the UK has a poster competition going on now. If you’re a reader in the UK or anywhere in the EU, get your youth on the case. There is a great prize for selected posters to be hung in a gallery! Get your entries in by June 10th!

Young people can do great things…  CSV launch poster design competition to champion young people

This spring, young people are being challenged to show off their artistic talents in a poster design competition – #giveachance – run by the charity CSV (Community Service Volunteers). The competition revives a nationwide poster competition run by the charity in 1984, which carried the strapline: Young people can do great things… if you give us a chance.

Keeping the original 1984 strapline, we want 2013’s generation of young people to show us their artistic talents by designing their own posters, championing young people and the great things they are capable of achieving. As in 1984 young people are under attack. The increase in tuition fees, the prevalent culture of unpaid internships, and sky-high youth unemployment all make it hard for young people to shine.

CSV has always worked with young people to highlight their unique contributions to society, from its Springboard projects helping young people into work and training, to providing volunteering opportunities to help others.

Entering is simple. We’re inviting people to tweet their designs mentioning @CSV_UK and using the hashtag #giveachance, or upload to Facebook mentioning their page. Alternatively designs can be emailed to web@csv.org.uk

Catherine Flood, Curator of Prints at the Victoria and Albert Museum and author of British Posters: Advertising, Art and Activism, will select the winning competition entry and all entries will be displayed on the CSV #giveachance Pinterest board. The winning and commended designs will be displayed at a special exhibition at Springboard Hackney, and the winner will also receive a signed copy of British Posters.

The competition launches on Monday 13th May 2013 and closes at midnight on 10th June 2013.

About the campaign:

The poster competition is part of CSV’s ‘Volunteer Champions’ campaign, celebrating the role volunteers play in changing lives everyday across the UK.

How you can get involved:

Please show your support for the CSV #giveachance competition by writing about it on your blog or encouraging your social media followers by either tweeting on Twitter using the hashtag #giveachance or sharing our campaign on your Facebook timeline.

For more information visit www.csv.org.uk/postercompetition

For competition promotional images please visit our dropbox folder or blogger assets page.

Even if you don’t live in the EU, you could organize a poster competition with other local youth groups or youth agencies around the same (or your own local) theme. The possibilities are endless for getting the word out about the great things young people are doing where you live!

Question: What other ways can you increase a positive profile of young people in your community? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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Getting To Know You Worksheet – Youth Group Activities

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Getting To Know You Worksheet
Help your youth get to know each other better with this activity

On Monday, we published an icebreaker that can be used to help your youth get to know each other better. That’s a fairly quick game, so here’s a Getting To Know You worksheet that can take the whole session if you’d prefer to spend longer on youth group activities like this.

There’s also a link to download a free printable copy of the worksheet below.

Resources

  • Worksheet (see below)
  • Pens

Preparation

None – there’s nothing quite like a youth work session that requires no planning!

Aim

To help the teenagers get to know each other better by highlighting areas in which they have common ground.

Instructions

Give each of the students a copy of the worksheet and a pen, then explain that they’re going to be doing a “getting to know you” activity.

There are 20 questions on the sheet – in the middle column, they have to write down answers for each of them. Once everyone’s completed that part, they should go around the room and find out if anyone has similar interests, noting down their name if they have the same or a similar answer. (n.b. make sure they write their own name on the sheet in the space at the top as well)

So long as you have time (and your youth group isn’t too big), try to get the students to talk to every other person in the group.

Tips

1. Preventing Bullying / Teasing

As this activity involves young people stating what some of their favorite things are, there’s the potential for some of them to be made fun of.

Therefore, before they start discussing their likes with each other, state that making fun of each other isn’t acceptable. If they don’t like something or disagree with someone’s answer, they can say something like “I prefer…” or “I don’t really care for that”, rather than “You seriously like that band?” or “But that TV show’s crap!”, etc.

2. Finding Common Ground

As the aim of this activity is to get to know each other better and highlight similarities between students, they should note down fellow students’ names if they have similar interests, even if their favorites aren’t the same.

For example, Student #1’s favorite sport is baseball, while Student #2’s is football but he likes baseball as well. Student #1 should write down #2’s name seeing as they still have common ground.

3. Keeping The Sheets

After the discussion, have a volunteer take photocopies of the sheets, making sure that they’re kept in order as the teenagers’ names are only noted on the first page.

Keep these copies so that you can learn more about your youth. Give the originals back to your young people so that they have a lasting memory of things that they have in common with their fellow students. This can also help with team building and youth group bonding in the future, as it’ll give them something to talk about by knowing that they have similarities.

Discussion

Once they’ve had a chance to discuss their interests with each other, sit down for a discussion about what they learned. Here are some suggestions of questions you could ask:

  • Were they surprised by how many things they had in common with each other?
  • Who did they have most in common with?
  • What question did they have least in common with when it came to other people?
  • What was the most interesting answer someone else had (reminding them that this isn’t so they can make fun of them!)

Getting To Know You Questions

Here are 20 questions that you can use for this session. Beneath this list is a copy of the free printable worksheet that you can download and use for your group.

  1. Favorite band/artist
  2. One thing I want to experience in life
  3. Favorite color
  4. Place I’d most like to go on vacation
  5. Favorite TV show
  6. Earliest memory
  7. Favorite celebrity
  8. The pets I have
  9. Favorite animal
  10. Job I want in the future
  11. Favorite sport
  12. How many brothers and sisters I have
  13. Favorite store
  14. If I could meet one person, it would be…
  15. Favorite song
  16. Most fun thing I’ve ever done
  17. Favorite movie
  18. Favorite type of food
  19. Something I’m scared of
  20. Favorite website or app

Download the Getting To Know You Worksheet

If you liked this idea, check out all our other youth group activities.

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6 Bridge Building Activities For Students

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Bridge building activities for studentsHelping students develop empathy can be very challenging, but it’s an important skill for them to develop as a ‘tween’ or teen, rather than hoping they learn it later in life as an adult.

One way you can do this is to plan one or more sessions about developing empathy, tolerance and / or bridge building.

To help you do this, here are 6 bridge building activities for students:

1. What does it mean?

Talk about what it means to ‘build a bridge’… like an actual one. What goes into it? (Answers will include things like mortar, bricks, cement, cable, steel, etc.)

2. Why do it?

Discuss why people build bridges to begin with – to reach other people, to get to the other side, to cross water, to speed up journeys, for safety, etc.

3. When can it be done?

Ask the group to identify times when they might need bridges between people. If they struggle to come up with ideas, here are a few suggestions:

  • Pro-choice / pro-life
  • People of faith / people of no faith or athiests
  • LGBTQA community members / anti-gay or homophobic groups or individuals
  • Different races
  • Different cultures
  • Different ages
  • Conservatives / liberals
  • Youth / parents

4. What is needed?

Define what is needed to build bridges between people. Answers might include love, patience, respect, listening, sharing, team work, etc.

Decide on three items that everyone can agree are necessary in all situations to build bridges between people who are opposite sides of any divide.

5. Practice doing it

Practice building a bridge together and encouraging the students to follow their own ‘rules’ about what is required for bridge building between others:

  • Have 3-4 materials for making the bridge – this might be spaghetti, marshmallows, gummy bears, toothpicks, tape, string, paper, scissors, etc.
  • Give one material to each young person and then put them into groups where everyone has the same item
  • Tell them to make a bridge with their materials. Usually the group who only has scissors will see that they need the group that has paper, who sees that they need spaghetti, who sees that they need tape, etc.
  • Have everyone bring their materials back to the middle
  • Ask them how building their bridge worked when everyone had the same strengths and weaknesses in the group. Highlight how differences make you unique and groups need diversity to be at their best (tying it back into empathy and / or tolerance for differences). For a church youth group, you could also tie this in to the church being one body made up of different parts
  • Split the groups up again. This time, give each group 4 different materials and give them 10-20 minutes to build their bridge

6. Reflect on it

Have them reflect on how the process of building the physical bridge might be translated over to bridge building between others. For example, they needed love, patience, etc. to build the bridge, just like they do when getting to know others who are different from them.

This is just one way to plan bridge building activities for students. Here are some more resources to help youth develop tolerance and empathy with one another.

Question: Have you done an activity like this before? How did it go? What would you recommend for other bridge building activities in helping youth develop empathy and/or tolerance?

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Live Below The Line – Youth Group Activities

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Live Below The Line Youth Group Activities
Breakfast on a $1.50 daily budget

Live Below The Line is a global campaign that seeks to both raise awareness about extreme poverty and raise money in order to make a difference for people living in that situation.

This week’s session plan idea therefore has some ideas for youth group activities to take part in this campaign.

What’s involved?

Extreme poverty is currently defined as having to live on $1.50 a day. The Live Below The Line campaign therefore encourages people to spend five days living on $1.50 a day, so a total of $7.50 over the course of the five days.

Although this would normally include all costs like housing, clothing, transport, etc, for the purpose of the campaign participants only have to restrict their $1.50 spending to food and drink.

The US part of the campaign is being run from April 29 to May 3 2013, but if this doesn’t provide enough time to prepare the following activities, your youth group could always participate during another 5 day period.

So here are some suggested youth group activities to help your young people have a more tangible appreciation for what life is like when living on such a small amount of money.

Activity 1 – Video

Watch a video which explains a little more about Live Below The Line. We’ve embedded one below featuring Hugh Jackman, but there are many more featuring Sophia Bush, Josh Groban and others.

n.b. This video is aimed at Australians, so gives the figure as $2 which is the Australian Dollar equivalent.

Activity 2 – Meal Planning

Sit down with your youth and plan out some meals that they might be able to afford on a $1.50 a day budget

To prepare for this, go to a grocery store and price out various staple foods and ingredients. Make a note of the:

  • Price per package
  • Weight of package
  • Portion size

This will enable you to calculate the cost per portion in advance. Create a worksheet with all the portion size prices so that the young people can pick and choose the different ingredients they need for each meal.

Here are some suggestions for food items to include:

  • Pasta
  • Rice
  • Baked potatoes
  • Bananas
  • Breakfast cereal
  • Milk
  • Eggs
  • Cheap cuts of meat
  • Canned tuna
  • Lentils
  • Vegetables
  • Ramen noodles
  • Canned tomatoes
  • Bread
  • Butter

Stipulate that they have to plan for three meals a day. Each meal doesn’t have to total $0.50, but they’re not allowed to exceed $1.50 per day.

See our previous session plan about meal planning for some further ideas on how to help young people learn how to do this.

Activity 3 – Cooking

Even if your youth group can’t fully participate in the entire campaign, cook and eat a meal together. For this part, allow $0.50 per person for ingredients.

This might cause some conflicts between youth who want to eat different things or who don’t like the meal that’s been chosen. Use this as an opportunity to discuss what it must be like for families who have to live on such a strict budget for their entire lives. Encourage them to try to find a meal that everyone’s able to agree upon.

Activity 4 – Fundraiser

Plan a youth group fundraiser as an activity to raise money for people who have to live on such a low budget every day of the year. The Live Below The Line website has a list of partner organizations who the money can be donated to.

A good option could be a spaghetti dinner fundraiser, restricting the portion size spending to $1.50 per person. You can then highlight to the attendees that the meal they just ate would be all that 1.4 billion people worldwide would be able to afford for that day’s food.

Try to charge as much as possible for the meal so that you can maximize the amount raised. If 50 people paid $10 per head, this would raise $425 after the food costs have been taken out. Arrange a collection for the attendees to donate further to the cause.

Activity 5 – Youth Retreat

If you’re planning a youth retreat, consider using a hunger theme, limiting the food spending to $1.50 per person per day. This will give the youth a much better idea of what it’s really like to live on such a low food budget and how bland and lacking in nutrition meals will tend to be.

This will also help reduce the cost of the youth retreat as you’ll need less money for the food budget. Charge the same amount for the retreat as you normally would though, using the additional money to either subsidize the cost for less well-off youth, or donate the rest to a charity that works with people living in extreme poverty.

Questions: Are you taking part in the Live Below The Line campaign? What kind of youth group activities are you planning? Let us know in the comments below.

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