Flourish Youth Awards for Volunteering and Participation
What is the Flourish Youth Awards for Volunteering and Participation?
The Flourish Youth Awards for Volunteering and Participation recognises young people’s volunteering and participation and the impact it has on their community and on their own personal development. The awards are an expansion of the Norfolk Youth Award that was originally set up by Norfolk County Council's Youth Service. While the name has changed since its inception, the award's main purpose to celebrate young people's achievements remains the same.
Linking the award to the Flourish framework:
Momentum has decided to join these awards to Norfolk County Council’s Flourish ambition. This objective has been inspired by the things young people have said are most important to them:
- Family and friends
- Access to learning
- The opportunity to lead a good life
- Being understood
- Building resilience
- Respect for their individuality
- Feeling safe
- Being healthy
How does it work?
All clubs, groups, and organisations working with young people in Norfolk can sign up to run the award – this can be done through filling in this simple online form. Once the form has been completed, you will receive the Flourish Youth Awards for Volunteering and Participation Pack through email from the Momentum team, which will help you to run the award for your group.
With the help of a youth worker / project leader, each young person sets themselves a goal that they will achieve through their volunteering or participation work (a minimum of 5 hours volunteering / participating in relation to their goal). It might be about their impact on their community, or about gaining new skills for themselves; or most likely, a bit of both.
The goal should be linked to one of the Flourish letters bullet pointed above and should be specific to each young person, and something that they consider a challenge – this might be something they haven’t done before, something they are nervous about, or something they have struggled with in the past.
Here are just some examples to help inspire:
- Family and Friends – Young person volunteering at an intergenerational project in their village that brings young people and older people together to take part in social activities.
- Learning – Young person doing voluntary work at a charity shop so that they can get retail experience.
- Opportunities – Young person volunteering to help at the community fair to give local families the opportunity to have a fun day out.
- Understood – Young person taking part in a youth voice day so that they can share their opinions and have their say in decisions that will benefit young people.
- Resilient – Young person volunteering at a community lunch, where young people prepare and serve a meal for people in the community.
- Individual – Young person joining an LGBTQ+ campaigning group at school because they believe it’s important to raise awareness of the challenges that LGBTQ+ people face.
- Safe and Secure – Young person helping to run a Lego club at their local library so that children and young people have somewhere safe and fun to play together.
- Healthy – Young person joining a youth voice group to help improve young people’s health services by sharing their experiences.
While the young person is completing their goal they will fill in an activity log and time log, which is validated by the youth worker / project leader. Once the youth worker / project leader is happy that the young person has achieved their goal and finished their activity log and time log, the youth worker / project leader can inform Momentum for them to then issue a certificate of achievement.
Who can get involved?
The Flourish Youth Awards for Volunteering and Participation is open to any 11–25-year-olds in Norfolk who are involved in a volunteering or participation project. This includes one-off events such as community litter picks or being part of a “youth voice” event, as well as regular volunteering such as being a junior leader in a youth club.
If you need help with the signing up process or have any questions please get in touch with us at info@momentumnorfolk.org.uk.
