Youth Cultural Champions’ Leadership and Networking Conference 2024.
45 Youth Cultural Champions from 4 Devon secondary schools attended this exciting and innovative Leadership and Networking Conference, funded by the Grocers’ Charity.
Youth Cultural Champions are young people from African, Caribbean, Asian, Latino, European and Mixed heritage back grounds. The YCCs training programme provides a safe space for them to explore and celebrate their heritage and discuss issues around racism and prejudice which affects them in their school life. This builds their self-esteem and self-confidence and leads to improvements in the school environment.
The aim of the conference day was to bring together Youth Cultural Champions from secondary schools across Devon; to share their experiences; to build a network between the young people and between their teachers; and to inspire them by introducing them to successful leaders from minority ethnic communities, who work in Exeter and Devon. Youth Cultural Champions also gave presentations to their peers about their identity, heritage and culture.
The 4 invited schools which attended were: Okehampton College, West Exe College, Clyst
Vale Community College and Coombeshead Academy.
The guest leaders were:
Ms Bindu Arjoon, CEO of Exeter City Council.
Krish Madray, CEO of ‘Care Matters. Training and Development’ working with the care sector.
Kalkidan Legesse, a highly successful social entrepreneur, founder of the Exeter-based ethical fashion retailer Sancho’s and the clothing resale platform OWNI.
Agnieszka Szpinda, since arriving from Poland has set up Polish-British community groups and now works for the NHS on diversity issues.
Somin Griffin-Dave, a successful creative sound artist, music producer and well-known DJ, working with all genres of world music, using the professional name Somatic.
The guests are all local people and offered to provide advice to anyone requesting it.
This was a very successful conference with the young people immediately making connections and forming informal networks. Teachers also welcomed the opportunity to forge a network to discuss issues common to all their schools.
This was an exciting and successful event and we are hoping to run another conference
day in the future.
This work was funded by a grant from the Grocers’ Charity, www.grocershall.co.uk
Follow up sessions …
