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.”