Lesson video

Hello, everybody.

Welcome to lesson four out of six of the unit of work, how can we make a difference in our communities? Looking forward to this lesson today, make sure you've got somewhere to work, and let's get started.

So for these lessons, you'll need, once again, paper to make notes, you also need pen and colours, and your enthusiastic learner head.

Once again, I hope you've got it.

The other thing I think might be useful to you are your notes from previous lessons, so if you've got those, bring those along as well.

So today we're going to look at the case studies of two young people who have sought to bring about change in their communities.

One's a local change, and the other that we're going to look at is a national change.

So, the three things we're going to learn are, who are changemakers in our community? What is the UKYP, the UK Youth Parliament? And also making a campaign to bring about change, and then there's going to be a take away task at the end as usual.

And I hope you enjoyed the last one that you did, about finding out about two local charities.

Did you share that with your teacher? I hope so, let's let them into what we're up to as well.

So, who are changemakers in our community? Well, we're going to look at local, national, and global communities, and they've all got people who can bring about change.

So I'm going to show you a diagram next, which is about the different levels of power in our country, okay? Are you ready for this? It looks confusing but don't be confused, we're just going to have a look at it in a bit more detail.

If you want to bring about change in our society, you have to know who to influence and persuade, to support you in your campaign.

These are the people in power.

Those with the position and responsibility to run our communities.

So, and I've got an idea about change, we need to work out who would be best to approach.

For example, if you wanted to improve your local play park, then the town or parish council would probably be your first contact.

If you had a bigger issue such as how we deal with the COVID crisis, then your Member of Parliament would be better to approach because they bring your issue to parliament.

They can do that, of course it takes a lot more than just one contact to bring about change, you need to get lots of support from a wide variety of people to show how much opinion is on your side.

So have a look at this diagram.

In the middle of the, it's a bit like a tree, isn't it? So in the middle of the trunk in the middle is the United Kingdom, that's England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

And the United Kingdom has lots of power across the country.

So you might think that the Prime Minister is the one with the ultimate power, but that's not actually true, the power is distributed.

So we've got three main branches here, we've got national, we've got regional, and then we've also got local government, then it branches off in two directions there.

So nationally, we've got the UK parliament, and there's some devolved powers to Wales and Northern Ireland and Scotland.

They all have some things that they're in charge of as well.

And then we go to regional, with basically here with London and that's divided up, so there's a Mayor for London, and there's a Greater London Authority.

And then over in local government side, we've got County Councils, District Councils, then we've got Town Councils and Parish Councils and Community Councils, and they're all the local government.

So, like I said earlier about the play park, then the Parish Council, the Town council might be the right place to go.

If we look at changing something bigger, then we've got the UK Parliament, and imagine that they've actually got the country wide things to worry about, but not the things that are local.

So within your school, there's also a hierarchy of power.

And some people can say yes to things without having to ask someone higher up, but often, that doesn't happen in that way, okay? So if you want to raise some money for a local charity, and wanted a non uniform day, you'd have to approach your head teacher, 'cause they're only they can make that decision.

And if you wanted to invite a guest speaker into assembly, then maybe your head of view is the right person to ask.

And if you wanted to change the curriculum in England, for example, let's say include more human rights and a taught citizenship curriculum, then you'd have to approach the Department of Education via your Member of Parliament.

So there's lots of different levels, and you can see on the bottom right hand corner, there's you, you're in that too and if you know where to go, you can influence those different people.

So this is an activity I'd like to do now, when you're doing this activity, you need to pause the slide and it's a gap fill activity.

I'd like you to complete the sentence using the words in the bottom.

So pause the video, fill the gaps, write out the whole sentence, and then we'll have a look at what you've written.

Okay, let's check your answer.

In our society, we have different levels of power.

The people in power have responsibility and can make choices about different issues in their jobs.

They're able to make decisions and bring about change in our communities, especially if they have access to funding.

If we target the right people, when we want to campaign for change, when we can show lots of support for that, then the change is more likely to happen.

Now check over your answer and give yourselves tick on every word that you've got right, and change it where if you haven't got it right this time, and then read it through again, once you've changed it, just kind of like lock into your head.

Okay, start the video again when you're finished doing that.

So, how can young people get involved in community change? I'm going to talk about the UK Youth Parliament, and this is something that you can get involved with.

This is a democratically elected group of 369 members, aged 11 to 18.

They're elected to represent the views of young people in their area to government and service providers.

Over 500,000 young people voted in the election every year, so they vote every year, and members meet regularly and host debates and run campaigns with an annual debate in the House of Commons in November.

A member of the UK Youth Parliament is called an MYP, Member of the Youth Parliament.

And so let's have a look at democratically elected.

Can you think what that might mean? Well, actually, it means that they stand to represent the people, and the people can vote and decide who they want to lead them and who they want to represent them.

And so that's kind of what democracy is, it's about being able to choose the people that lead you.

And also, you are one of those people, you could be, you could stand in the UK Youth Parliament.

So it's open to everybody.

Now, I invited Isaac into our lesson as a special guest.

I'll ask you questions about the interview afterwards.

So we're going to watch an interview, so watch it carefully.

The questions that'll ask after the video will be, Isaac Codjoe started, he did this because, he convinced the local council that, and they are the three questions I'm going to ask you, but you can always rewind if you need to.

So let's watch the video now, I recorded it a few days ago, and then we'll move on after that.

I'd like to introduce you to Isaac Codjoe, he's a former member of the UK Youth Parliament.

And thank you today for coming in and being my guest, Isaac.

No worries, thank you for having me.

It's my pleasure, thank you for agreeing, it's great to get young people in and you could present to other young people.

So, you're based in Ipswich in Suffolk, is that right? Yeah, so I live in the Ipswich, I've lived here for the past eight, nine years.

Yeah, more recently, as you just said, I'm the former member of Youth Parliament for Ipswich, so I pretty much represent all young people in Ipswich, aged 11 to 18, on a local and national level, fighting for change even, or amongst young people.

Well, that's actually, that sounds like a really big responsibility.

So, you actually stood to be an MYP, was it in 2018? Yeah, 2018, yep.

So what motivated you to become an MYP? I was just really passionate for creating a change for young people I always have in schools just whenever I saw that injustices amongst a lot of young people, I just always wanted to stick up for the people that are less fortunate or the people that are being singled out.

I just wanted to try and represent them and be a voice for them.

And I just wanted to, and when the opportunity came for running for Youth Parliament, I thought, oh, wow, I can do this on a bigger stage even then, just within one school, I can do an event or all schools within Ipswich, or even across the country.

So yeah, I just wanted to try and do something positive for other young people that could hopefully try and inspire change amongst our generation, which is future generation, yeah.

Absolutely, wow, I mean, that's kind of like the ultimate thing we can do as humans, isn't it? To kind of make them better for future generations, and if the people that we live with at the moment, I think that's-- Yeah.

Right, so while you were in office as a member of the UK Youth Parliament, what issues were you campaigning on? What did you do whilst you were in office as it were? Okay, so when I got into office first of all, there's a major incident of black crime in my town.

Tara Spencer Aikens, he was like brutally murdered, and this would pretty much shook up the whole town because Ipswich, I'm not sure if you know, it's a very like, peaceful town, which is surrounded by a lot of like farmland, right in the middle of like Suffolk.

So everyone was just like shaken up, especially amongst a lot of the young people and young people coming up to me saying that they weren't feeling safe anymore.

And then I was just like, this is completely wrong, young people should be able to walk the streets of Ipswich and feel safe.

So I campaigned quite hard on knife crime to start with, and then I met with police commissioners, local councillors, the former MP of Ipswich, Sandy Martin.

And then I even raised the issue in the House of Commons, so yeah, that was quite big for me to start with.

And then obviously, I continued following the voice of the young people in my town, and that was also a big thing as it still is.

And I just really wanted to try and raise awareness on this issue so that young people don't have to feel pressured by any situation or by anyone, and they can just feel comfortable with whatever scenario they're going through, whatever they're going through at school, at home, so I can just truly be happy and enjoy the youth as young people, yeah.

So it sounds like actually, you were really busy during your time in the UK Youth Parliament, you've lots to, lots of people to have to talk to, how did you kind of get in touch with the young people that you were speaking up for, that you were representing? To start with, I just started off of like online polls and online survey, it's just because I myself, there's only so much that one person can do, so I just also got my deputy to help me send around to people at his school and friends.

Friends of friends just like pretty much, just like by word of mouth, but then after going to Youth Parliament functions, and other MYPs talked about youth councils they had in their towns, it was like, they explained that pretty much they're all young people from their towns and cities came together as one group and just discuss issues that they were facing as young people in their towns, and what they wanted to see change, and then I came back and looked at my town, Ipswich and saw that we didn't have any platform, and this way young people could come together and just discuss things, and just be represented and know that they have a voice, and a say of what happens within the town communities.

So I actually decided to change this, and alongside my deputy Will Pope, we decided to create Ipswich's first youth council, whereby we could have one single platform that doesn't matter where you come from, your race, your social class, background, or ethnicity, or gender or anything.

We could just come together as one voice, the voice of the young people of Ipswich and that what we've discussed is being heard.

And luckily enough, we've been backed by local Councillors, MPs, governors, so yeah, it's pretty much, it's going good, it's going good.

I think it's kind of blossomed and bloomed into something that's a real, it's a real voice for young people in Ipswich, something that they didn't have before.

And you've actually made that happen, that's a big deal, isn't it? Yeah, definitely, I think what we needed is, we just needed someone to kickstart the discussion of creating a youth council, then that slowly accumulated into more tangible, physical thing.

And now we're a really positive stage where we're recruiting official members now.

And yeah, we've even got a space force in Suffolk County Council, so yeah, it's going well for us, yeah, definitely.

That's brilliant, yeah, well done.

Thank you.

So I've looked at some of the work you've been doing and you've recently presented a report that you put together about Black Lives Matter, and you talk about young people's experiences and views of what's actually happening in Ipswich in terms of race and discrimination and things like that.

So where did you go next? Where do we need to go next with this issue? As a whole, I think we just need to start off by starting the discussion, like, it may be a little bit awkward, but like, that's the best way because I feel as if you're able to start with this discussion, you're able to understand the other person, and when you're able to understand them, you're less likely to have, let's say, microaggressions or prejudice or perceive ideas of what person or a different background might be like.

And then from there when you are within schools or within your friendship groups or whatever, and there's something that said that you know isn't right that might be a little bit ignorant, just make sure you speak up and that you remind the person, that what you're saying, isn't acceptable and that, that could make the other party feel less happy within not just your own, your friendship group, but within their own skin and realising that other people probably go through this on a daily, so your little show of affection and support might actually like made the day and could even Put help blossom in your friendship.

So yeah, definitely just speak out, yeah.

It's about standing up for other people, isn't it? It's about-- Definitely.

Spotting things and saying hang on a minute, and calling stuff out and saying that's not okay, how about this instead? I really like that idea of just listening to each other and finding out about other people's opinions because that's how we learn and grow, isn't it? To kind of, and build our own opinions as well.

So, why do you think Ipswich Council going to go with your report? Is there anything they're going to do with it now? So I've actually got a meeting with the deputy head of the Suffolk County Council.

She's been very supportive of us, and she is actively recognised that there is a problem with systemic racism.

And that there are steps that we can take to solve it, but the only way we can solve is if we actually have discussions and talk together.

And so that we can actually formulate a plan together of how we're going to tackle it step by step.

So that's what we're in the process of doing now, so we've published a report and now we're just meeting with different groups and different decision makers so that we can formulate a plan of how we're actually going to tackle this problem.

So yeah, that's what we're doing next.

Let's say it's definitely a work in progress, but it sounds like-- Definitely.

It's like the best goal really, isn't it? Yeah.

To eliminate discrimination and racism in all state.

Yes, it's definitely not a thing that you can solve overnight.

It's like a process, and as we go through this process, we're all going to be learning along the way.

So, yeah, we're all going to benefit from it definitely.

Yeah, excellent.

So who are your leadership role models? The people that you've kind of maybe aspire to or the characteristics of a certain person that you've liked.

I take aspects from an array of different people, anyone that I see doing positive things within society, or within politics, such as David Lammy speaking out when he saw racial discrimination within politics, people like that, they're just inspire me to pursue my passions because I'm a firm believer, if you don't have passion for something, then you shouldn't really be doing it because if your heart is like truly in, then you're going to do it and give it your all.

And I think with anything you do, you should be aspiring to give it your all.

So yeah, just people that are doing things with true passion, those people inspire me.

Excellent, thanks for that Isaac.

No worries.

So for you, you've just finished school? Sixth form, yep.

After you've finished sixth form, what are your future ambitions? So, as you just said, I just finished year 13, and now the next step for me is going to university.

And then from there, I'm looking to get a degree in management, and then from there, I've looking to go into the consulting field, and then later along the line, I'm looking to come back to my politics sort of root and have a career within the government.

Yeah, so I definitely like to give back to the community once more, and try and be a voice for the people, the marginalised, the oppressed so that we can truly live on a more equal environment where-- Absolutely.

Yeah, definitely where people can be treated the same no matter the race, background or anything, so that we can just like truly live happily, yeah.

And I think you'll find in university that there'll be lots of opportunities for you to actually carry on the sort of stuff that you're doing now, it's almost like you've got a legacy to leave to the young people in Ipswich whilst you're studying, isn't it? Yeah.

You've kind of hope that they could carry on while your away.

Yeah, that was why, and that's why I was so eager on continuing with the Youth Council even amongst all the COVID and Coronavirus thing slow going on so that I could truly go to university knowing that I've done all that I could, to try and create a Youth Council which will truly last life for the generations so that people in Ipswich will always have a platform, young people will also have a platform where they know that they're being heard and know that they are truly making a difference.

Well, I think that's what it's all about, that's what makes a difference in your community is about and it's to have the passion that you've got Isaac, and to Yeah, thank you.

To stand up and actually say this is what I care about, and I'm going to do something about it.

Yeah.

So, is there anything else you'd like to talk about or say? I just like to encourage all the young people, anyone that's listening to this to not be afraid to stick up for what you believe in, and to truly do things with your heart with passion just like if you see something that's wrong and you want to make a change, don't be scared to do it, just take that bold step.

I know it might be a bit out of your comfort zone, like I never thought I'd be able to do the things I've done like even speak in the House of Commons, like I was nervous throughout the whole thing.

I even forgot to mention my name at the start, but just go for it because you don't know the things that might lead from it, like, even if you decide to create a change and you affect one person's life, that's still a positive outcome, like, that's the way I saw it.

If within my work, I was able to positively affect one person's life, I'd be happy if the whole thing is worth it, so yeah, just be passionate, and yeah, just go for it, just go for it.

Thank you, Isaac, thank you, I've really, really enjoyed interviewing you today.

No worries, the pleasures is mine.

Yeah, I hope that the young people that get to watch that are inspired by your story.

Thank you, thank you, thanks a lot.

Okay.

Okay, so now we've watched the video, we saw what Isaac has done whilst he's been a member of the UK Youth Parliament.

What changed did Isaac start in Ipswich? I'd like you to pause the video and answer these questions on your paper.

So write a short paragraph about what Isaac did when he was an MYP.

Isaac Codjoe started, he did this because, he convinced the local council that, so use those sentence starters to write your short paragraph, and when you're finished, restart the video.

So what did you write? Let's have a look at the model answer and we can see how yours compares.

If yours is different, that's okay because we all have a different perspective of the things that we've watched.

So don't worry if yours isn't identical to this, you can add bits as well, if you like.

Isaac started the Ipswich Youth Council with his deputy Will Pope, after he was elected as a member of the UK Youth Parliament.

He did this because he had been to UKYP meeting, and on listening to other young MYP's experiences in their hometowns, he realised that Ipswich didn't have any way for young people to have a voice.

He convinced the local council that young people should be listened to, and now he is recruiting official members of the Youth council, who will also have a place in the town council.

That's really good, isn't it? The youth council did research and they wrote a report about racism in the town, and these issues are now being tackled by the council.

So even though Isaac was only in MYP for 12 months, he's made a big impact already on his community.

So this is really good, isn't it? If this is, if you've got MYP in your county, then you can contact them and say, I'm really worried about this issue, or I'm really worried about that, can we talk about it? And then they then can talk to the change makers, the people in power, and that's what Isaac's been doing.

So he's been talking to the people in his local council about how they deal with racism in young people.

So let's have a look at the stages Isaac went through.

So first of all, he identified the issue, after going to UK Youth Parliament conference, Isaac realised that there wasn't a way for young people to be heard in his town.

So the next stage is he started the campaign, the murder of a young local man pushed him to stand up for young people.

This was really unusual and surprising in Ipswich and it's something that he realised mustn't happen again.

Young people were frightened.

So he gathered support, that's the next stage, stage three.

Issac with his deputy contacted a wide range of different changemakers, so the police, council and his local Member of Parliament.

And the last stage, look at the success he found, and the Youth Council was official.

They have started their work by examining the issue of racism in Ipswich.

New members are now being recruited to continue Isaac's work.

So I wish Isaac absolutely the best at university and also to Ipswich Youth Council in what they're doing, fantastic.

Okay, the next person, I said we were going to look at something local.

So Isaac's campaign was a local campaign in Ipswich, and I'd like to introduce you to Amika George, and she started her campaign, #FreePeriods.

And I want you to read the Amika George case study, then you're going to find this in the class worksheet attached to the lesson.

If you need help reading the worksheet, please ask someone to read with you, because it's quite a lot of writing and there's a lot of reading there, it might be nice if somebody else can read that with you as well if you need that.

So pause the video so that you can read it and then come back and restart the video when you finish reading.

So let's have a look at Amika George's, #FreePeriods campaign, the stages she went through.

First of all, she identified the issue.

Amika realised that girls were missing school when they had their periods.

Over 137,000 girls, one week out of every four, that is so many young people, isn't it? So she started her campaign in stage two to campaign for free period products for girls who were receiving Free School Meals.

So this is what she's campaigned to, but she needed to gather support.

So that's stage three, Amika gathered lots of support, including from three political parties who pledged to include free period products for girls in their manifestos at the last general election.

And she found success, she managed to convince Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, and he agreed to fund three period products in school.

And then you can find out about the whole campaign story in the worksheet.

Now if you want to read it again, you can do that, but she went straight to the House of Commons with her campaign 'cause that was the only place that really can make an impact.

This man that Philip Hammond could direct funding to her campaign.

Trouble is, this isn't law though, and the current government could stop the funding if they wanted to.

So it's up to her to keep the pressure on, and another people now that support her to actually keep pressure on the government to keep funding this.

So what did we learn today? Who are changemakers in our community? If you remember back, we talked about the distribution of power in the UK, and that you have to kind of target the right people, depending on what their responsibilities are.

We looked at the UK Youth Parliament, so we know what the UK Youth Parliament is, democratically elected group of young people.

And we've met Isaac Codjoe, and then finally we looked at a national campaign, Amika George's campaign, and that was to bring about change, and she actually succeeded in bringing about change as well.

So well done to Amika.

Now I'd like you to do a takeaway task, it's not too gigantic this time, sometimes I'll give you more to do and sometimes less.

I hope you've read the story of Amika George's campaign to stop period poverty, and you'll find this in the worksheets section of the lesson.

So have a read of that again, if you'd like to, and then your task today, and this is a challenge.

And I want you to push yourself to do this, I want you to tell the story to someone else, what did Amika campaign about? And why did she do it? And what methods did she use? And how effective were they? So talk to somebody about it, tell your parent or your carer, talk to your friend about it, tell them about what you found out and actually how effective one young person could be once they've come up with a campaign and really push that campaign through.

You have to be tenacious, you have to be determined, but in the end, if you get enough support, you can do that.

Now I'd like you to do the exit quiz to test what you've learned today, that's at the end of the lesson, so when you finish, you can do that.

And keep the notes you make, I want you to ask questions about things and enjoy investigating, look further into the campaign, you can go onto the internet and find out about what's going on there.

So that's the end of today's lesson, I hope you enjoyed it.

If there's anything you get, you're not sure about, rewind, it's perfect, isn't it? The thing that you can rewind and ask again.

So, rewind the lesson if you need to back to the place that you want to go to.

If you'd like to share your work on Oak National, please ask your parent or carer, ask them to share on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, or all of them and you need to tag @OakNational and use the #LearnwithOak.

I hope that you've enjoyed the lesson, don't forget to do the quiz and I'll see you again next time, bye.