Our Youth Health Champions is a volunteering opporunity designed in partnership with the NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde in order to promote health topics within the local community for young people and to deliver training to local organisations with their peers. We are using Peer Education as an approach to health promotion, in which community members are supported to promote health-enhancing change among their peers.
The Youth Health Champions will be gettiing involved with:
- Promoting health topics within your local community
- Attending training days
- Attending health champion meetings
- Supporting the delivery of YoMo/NHS Health Programme
- Supporting YoMo’s/NHSGGC’s Peer Education delivery
- Attending events
- Promoting YoMo/NHSGGC within the community
- Delivering health related training to your peers within local youth groups and schools
- Supporting the development of health-related training packs to be delivered to peers
With the support from YoMo and NHSGG&C Health Improvement Team staff, young people gain valuable skills and experience, to enabling them to become a peer educator. It will enhance a young persons' employability skills, as it will be a unique addition to a Curriculum Vitae (CV). Through the process, young people will gain a Saltire Award for their volunteering hours and will be given the opportunity to gain at least two or more accredited qualifications.
Throughout the Youth Health Champion programme, we have worked with one girl who has developed massively through the programme. At her initial session she described how through school she struggled massively with talking in groups and would “definitely not like to deliver a peer education session but would like to just enjoy the training”. Through the programme she grew in confidence developed her skills through training, completing her Youth Achievement award and engaging with YoMo as a service. She was given an opportunity to deliver what she had learned and developed to a group of her peers of which she was reluctant at first but the session then saw her take full lead in delivering icebreaker games, supporting young people to discuss
what health meant to them and raising awareness of nutrition and its effects. She has also now engaged with multiple of our programmes where she has attended residential to build on life skills, promoted YoMo and health topics to other organisations and her peers.
She has given the following statement:
“My name is Karen I’m currently 14 years old I started Youth Health Champs on September 2017. I’ve learned a lot from September. I’m more aware about mental health issues and other health topics how they don’t just affect the person involved but can have a negative effect on their families and others surroundings. This has benefited me because me because it was an eye opener for me personally because it raised my awareness that young people the same age as me can have these problems. I have really enjoyed the training and can’t wait to deliver now. I’m a really shy person and always have been. YoMo is helping so much with my confidence. I went on a residential with YoMo and meet so many new people this helped with my confidence levels because I had to interact with other people that where sharing the same experience as myself. My favourite topic so far was looking at statistics of inequality and poverty in the east end of Glasgow. This showed me that inequalities are different for every individual. I also learnt that life expectancy is very different in different areas of Glasgow for example Ruchill and Possilpark life expectancy is 73 years old compared to Kelvinside at 84 years old this is a difference of 11 years.”
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