Empowering Young People With Digital Storytelling

For the past year, Purpose has been working with UK-based charities UpRising and Nesta to explore the power of digital storytelling and online platforms to impact local decision-making. We launched a pilot programme in Birmingham, UK, where we helped to train staff and volunteers at UpRising to support young leaders aged 15-24 in creating stories for change.

To empower young people to craft digital stories and campaigns of their own, we published a reference guide entitled Raising Your Voice: Digital Storytelling to Create Change.  Throughout the spring and summer, young leaders engaged through UpRising’s My Voice My Vote programme used the learnings from the guide to launch a series of digital campaigns to impact change in their local community. Aside from helping many young people to discover their political voice, a handful of those campaigns have also helped to start a broader conversation on local issues, with some being showcased by media outlets, such as local radio, Sky News and Sky News’s emerging youth platform Stand Up Be Counted.

Uprising’s My Voice, My Vote programme coordinator, Craig Francourt describes exactly how the project has helped him to empower young people to affect change in this vlog:

This week, we’ve published the findings from our work in the final report Exploring Online Democratic Platforms for Young People to Effect Change, which imparts key insights and recommendations for local decision-makers and other stakeholders to help them to engage young people and increase youth participation in local issues. We’re excited to share these learnings in the anticipation that local decision-makers and stakeholders can use them to develop further opportunities for young people to create change and make their voice heard.

See more here.  

Links from the article: 
http://www.uprising.org.uk/
http://www.nesta.org.uk/
http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/raising-your-voice-digital-story-telling-create-change
http://vimeo.com/113391956
http://www.nesta.org.uk/sites/default/files/purposeuprising_insights_report-final_10dec.pdf
http://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/report-exploring-online-democratic-platforms-young-people-effect-positive-change#sthash.8q9nEdNy.dpuf