Another year at InspireChilli
2021 started on a high in my new role as chair of the extraordinary We Belong. Over 2021, this award-winning youth-led-and-run charity has achieved many successes including expansion of its work into Manchester, reaching new audiences through a Panorama documentary, and a historic commitment from the Home Office to half the 10 year route to settlement for eligible young people from migrant backgrounds. I have also served as a trustee for Sounddelivery media in its first year as a charity and was delighted to assist in the shortlisting of applicants for its brilliant Spokesperson Network programme.
Celebrating the 10th anniversary of Advantaged Thinking was a major personal highlight for me - https://inspirechilli.blogspot.com/2021/05/advantagedthinking10-5-takeaways.html
An online event held with the Foyer Federation and Your Housing Group attracted over 100 participants from around the world, with an extra-special t-shirt to mark the occasion designed by Ranae Kiara from InspireChilli’s Team Young People. Alongside this, I generated new writing to draw together all the learning from Advantaged Thinking into an exciting publication with Foyer Federation and Your Housing Group to be published in the new year - watch out!
I worked alongside a dream team of academics Sean Creaney and Samantha Burns to produce, with Peer Power Youth and their team of Peer Experts, the excellent ‘Co-creation and participation in the youth justice system’ report https://www.peerpower.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Long-Report-YJB-Design-by-Lizzie-Reid-final-1.pdf, including my section on ‘Strengths not offence: taking a strengths-based approach in YJS’.
I produced an ambassador manual for Clarion Futures, offering various practice insights to support young people to make a transition from a volunteer into a sessional worker or employee. In a year of resource development, I also played a key role to support the development of Homeless Link’s Being Strengths Based Toolkit and stimulating Community of Practice sessions https://www.homeless.org.uk/being-strengths-based-collected-resources
Overseas, I completed the first round of re-accreditations using the new Foyer Accreditation Framework I designed with the Foyer Foundation in Australia (https://foyer.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/AFFAF-2020-v2.pdf) including a successful programme to train and support the Foyer Foundation’s first assessors. Australian Foyers continue to lead the way in developing an innovative offer for young people, and the new accreditation system allows a stronger focus on meeting expectations for young people, including those from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds. I was particularly delighted to see how the new system made it easier to include young people representatives on the Accreditation Panel for the first time, an important step forwards.
Staying on an international theme, I delivered a keynote speech on my Advantaged Thinking journey for this year’s World Teacher Day event in Victoria, Australia; and I appeared alongside Sean Creaney and Peer Power experts to share findings from our youth justice work (see above) at this year’s World Congress on Justice with Children in November.
Working with youth-led States of Mind, I produced an evaluation report for the impactful Connecting Minds mental wellbeing programme (https://inspirechilli.blogspot.com/2021/03/connecting-minds-learning-report.html) securing investment from the National Lottery Community Fund to scale up this excellent initiative to more young people and staff across Foyers in England over 2021-22.
I continued to support Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Blagrave Trust with the progress of the innovative Opportunity Fund, capturing learning from the first cohort of young leaders completing the programme this year, with some outstanding achievements from individual entrepreneurs and campaigners supported by the work of Launch It and Peer Power. On the same theme of youth leadership, I also developed an effective new model for supporting youth involvement strategies which I have shared with organisations working with me as a consultant on youth governance and involvement approaches, one of my favourite topics.
I operated as a critical friend for Dublin’s Northside Partnership to accelerate their impressive leadership journey with Advantaged Thinking, including mentoring for internal champions and training sessions with partners. In the vein of friendship, I have continued to serve as a lead partner for Foyer Federation, supporting its important work to deliver on the Home for Advantaged Thinking Strategy (https://www.foyer.net/homeforadvantagedthinking)
A year wouldn’t be the same without being part of the organising team for another 'Room for Young People' event with partners LiveWest, Clarion Housing Group, Foyer Federation and the Housing Association Youth Network, overseeing the judging of Inspiration Award entries through inspirechilli’s Team Young People to showcase another amazing range of stories from young people and staff demonstrating resilience and commitment across the youth housing sector (https://inspirechilli.blogspot.com/2021/11/make-more-room-for-young-people.html). I was also proud to attend the event alongside Ranae Kiara, who designed the winners’ certificate and tshirts in her usual cool style, marking what proved to be the most youth-led event yet.
As the year closes, I’m looking forward to future opportunities over 2022, including:
- Further progress with We Belong’s community organising and policy influence work
- The potential development of a new housing and support model that frees young people to explore work options without the usual restrictions from high rents; and work to support the development of a new Foyer model in Hong Kong.
- Critical Friendships with charities looking for expertise to guide their work
- New writing to explore the topic of ‘authenticity’ through some radical thinking
- Offering training sessions and resource tools to accelerate asset-based approaches
- Opportunities to benchmark performance between youth provision in the UK and Australia through my involvement in both sets of Foyer Accreditation programmes
- Potential innovations with Foyer Federation from the launch of our new Advantaged Thinking publication, to hopefully turn some of the concepts introduced in its chapters into new programmes and approaches
- Further evaluation and learning work, including a report for Connecting Minds and other exciting new programmes currently in development
- Like everyone else, more chances to connect in person with missed friends and contacts both in the UK and overseas – including my own Team Young People
- All the exciting unknowns that I leave space to explore each year… which could include you? Do get in touch with me at hello@inspirechilli.com with any new year inspirations : )
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