The Youth and Philanthropy Initiative (YPI) is a powerful active citizenship programme empowering young people to make a difference in their communities.
YPI engages a full year group of students, developing skills and confidence through a contextualised learning experience. Through teamwork, research, and competition, young people advocate for social issues in a bid to secure a £3000 grant for their chosen charity.
Our Commitment
Working in partnership with schools, YPI is a fully resourced programme. A dedicated team from The Wood Foundation supports each school to deliver an impactful programme, including collaboratively planning, facilitating launches, overseeing the judging process at finals and helping reflect and set future goals. A comprehensive suite of resources are available.
We are also committed to ensuring educators are supported to realise the full potential of the programme in terms of their own learning and teaching, including providing opportunities to observe other schools and connect with other YPI practitioners through our Professional Learning offer.
Led by your YPI Programme Officer, the planning meeting is a core feature of the support structure, providing an opportunity for the YPI lead teacher, senior leadership link, and other delivery colleagues to discuss and share resources, agree on timelines and dates, and explore how to maximise the impact of the programme for the coming year.
Your YPI Programme Officer will provide further guidance on the process of launching YPI during your planning meeting. During the launch, either facilitated by us or co-delivered with yourself and guest speakers (e.g. former winning teams and / or charities), pupils will be introduced to the YPI process, and begin to explore the key concepts of philanthropy and social issues. Our launch resources support the process.
You decide how best to deliver YPI within your own context. The optional delivery resources, including content plans, and an editable delivery PPT and student workbook are available to support you throughout. Ideally, students should follow the process detailed on the Student Zone, but how you get from the launch to the final is up to you. Your Programme Officer is also happy to support you along the way too.
The YPI Final Showcase is an important date in the school calendar as a chance to bring the school community together to celebrate YPI. The event can be adapted to suit local context and circumstances. A representative from The Wood Foundation needs to be present to support and ensure the judging process is fair and impartial.
The judging pack will support your judging panel on the day of the final and The Wood Foundation team will coordinate the issuing of the grant, following the event.
The reflection session is a core feature of the YPI support structure. The focus of the session is wholly flexible and bespoke to your school’s context, but aims to explore your aims, objectives, and ambitions for the YPI programme.
Your Programme Officer will schedule in time for this session after your Final Showcase.
Over and above our core resources above, we are continually developing the support available to schools.
Download additional resources below or explore some teacher created resources in the teacher exchange on the Inspiration Zone.
Working with likeminded partners supports the sustainability of YPI as we grow the opportunity throughout Scotland.
