Young people have stated that YPI is improving their teamwork skills and giving them a better understanding of their communities.

A review of the responses from YPI student surveys from the first half of the academic year of more than 750 students at more than 20 schools reveals that:

• Students are choosing their charities because they wanted to support the issue (46%) and to raise awareness of the issue (31%), with 29% stating the issue was important to them.
• That the top three skills developed are teamworking (78%), research (77%), and communicating in writing (68%). These percentages are significantly higher than in previous years.
• Young people enjoyed working with their teams (70%), learning about social issues and the community (50%), and researching different charities (42%).
• 30% of young people plan to stay in touch with their charity, with 17% hoping to volunteer and 10% considering a career in the third sector after YPI.

Mel Liddell, Learning and Evaluation Manager at The Wood Foundation, designs and analyses the YPI surveys. She said:

“We are halfway through the academic year and this insight from students is invaluable to understand why YPI is so important to them – in terms of their feeling of contribution to their communities and their skills development.

“Despite Covid-19 still presenting significant challenge, young people are clearly working hard to make the most of the YPI opportunity and enjoying the chance to engage and advocate for causes they care about.”

Young people shared the following reflections:

• “I enjoyed working with my group and having some independence.”
• “Learning about the charity and all the things these amazing people do, and the stories of other who are going through a hard time. I enjoyed working with my team and making other in my team more confident.”
• “I enjoyed that we had a lot of freedom and we just were kind of left to do what we had to do it definitely helped with time management skills.”
• “I liked the fact that it gave us an opportunity to actually go and find out about charities.”
• “So far I’ve enjoyed getting to be independent and working in a small group to find out more about our chosen charity”

Students complete the YPI surveys shortly before the semi-finals to gain an accurate understanding of the experience of all participants.

Please contact your Regional Facilitator for more information.