YouthNet blog

Monday May 19, 2008

Why we need to champion volunteer youth leaders

The recent spate of teenage killings in London and the subsequent election of Boris Johnson as the capital’s mayor has brought the issue of providing out-of-school opportunities for young people to the forefront. Mayor Boris has already said he’s going to invest in weekend activities for young people in an effort to crush the blight of gangs and gang-culture.

It’s all very good offering money, but many of these activities are already provided by the voluntary sector. Indeed one of the standard cries of certain commentators in both the media and political arenas is “why aren’t they taking part in after school clubs?” before reeling off a long-list of activities they had access to when they were young.

The response, if you ask any of the charities who run these activities, is that they simply don’t have the number of adults willing to run these projects, especially outside of leafy-surburbs and market towns and villages. My own experience of running a youth group based in Handsworth, a struggling part of Birmingham, was that within weeks of realising there was something fun and engaging to do I had a weekly stream of new young people wanting to get involved. Yet with just me and one other adult volunteer we couldn’t reasonably take more than 15 of them.

I hated the fact I had to turn young people away; but the brutal truth was I couldn’t be expected to cater for all of them. I hated the fact that when I discovered one of them was only 9, I had to stop him coming because our minimum age was 10 (and why should I allow him in when there were 10 and 11 year olds who we were turning away?). I knew he’d be wandering the streets whilst his older brother was benefitting from the group.

Sat in the pub on Friday night, the group I was with got on to discussing being involved in youth groups.  Of the six around the table, 4 or 5 had been involved in one group or another at some point whilst growing up; and pretty much all of them had had positive experiences.

What, however, was more interesting was the attitude towards the leaders who helped out. The nudge-nudge, wink-wink attitude about leaders, especially males, and them volunteering to work with young people. The inference being that anyone who took on these sorts of roles must have some sort of ulterior or underhand motive.

And yet, ask any of these organisations and they’ll tell you that engaged, motivated and high-calibre youth leaders (male and female) are like gold-dust. They are crying out for leaders not just to expand their services, but to keep them running at their current level. They are not just a fantastic asset for the organisation but brilliant role-models for the young people involved.

But we’re never going to make volunteering with young people attractive if those that do, even in the confides of pub banter, are being labelled in an extremely negative way. We make huge demands on volunteers who work with young people, we shouldn’t be adding to that by expecting them to defend themselves against those kinds of lurid accusations, even if they are said in jest.

The sector needs to do more to tackle this negative portrayal and present volunteering with young people in a positive way.  Because not only is it becoming increasingly difficult to recruit into these roles, but more volunteer leaders are simply going to decide it’s more hassle than it’s worth.

And then eventually the only people left willing to volunteer to work with young people will be exactly the sort of people who probably shouldn’t.