I was surrounded by. Then eventually I got my act together towards the end of those nine months and I tried to go to school more and to prioritise what was important in my life. And then I got my own flat.
Over that time I stopped going to as many meetings with YEA because everything else was happening. It was difficult because it was just me and I didn’t have parental support, but the YEA staff were amazing at helping me and making sure that I had all the support I needed to help me deal with stuff. I remember always feeling comfortable talking to them about my life and what was going on. It felt natural to talk to them because they already knew me, they knew my background and knew my story. We had a day where all of my YEA friends came round and we painted my new flat. Like everyone! People came who I hadn’t seen for ages and it was a lot of fun. One of the girl’s mum even came round and brought some furniture. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I hadn’t gone to that first meeting with YEA ’cos YEA is just so intertwined with a lot of things in my life.
Katherine’s story
From what I remember I got involved with YEA through school. Every morning my teacher would read out things in registration class and when she read this one out she said, “This is a great opportunity, it seems like a you thing” and I was like, “Yes, that seems like a me thing!” I guess I was always a bit of a social warrior in some ways.
The first thing I did was the peer mentor training. I was a baby, a 12-year-old girl who didn’t say anything and always had her hair up in a ponytail – I was so shy! Lots of shy people might have stopped going, but I kept going and I stayed silent but still took everything in. At that point I didn’t know much about politics and the others would all go off on all sorts of tangents, I was learning so much about things that I’d had no idea about. It was around the time of the independence referendum and everyone was very heated in their opinions and that was really interesting; in school our teachers avoided the topic but in YEA those conversations were encouraged. And what was good about it was that it wasn’t a big group, there were only about ten people, we were always sat in a circle so I never felt excluded.
Then I got involved in the gatherings and the action research groups. At first I was a bit confused about what was going on, but confused and enjoying it so it didn’t matter that I was thinking, “Why am I doing this?”, and then it got to the point that I was like, “Okay, I think I understand what I’m doing now” and then suddenly, “I’m also chatting loads! What? I’ve changed!” So you stumble slowly further and further into it and then you’re like, “Okay, I’m fully in this now!”
It’s like a wee community – that’s important – I don’t feel like we just come to do the activity, we come to see the people. It’s important that there’s a time in each meeting just to catch up. I feel like the staff are aware that it is a safe space for us. When people come from all over the city they want to chat and I feel like the staff are very good at respecting the fact that that needs to happen. I also feel like the open atmosphere is really important; you can say anything, there’s not exactly rules but there is respect. If you disagree with someone, you can just say, “I don’t agree with you because …” and then you explain why and people will respect what you say but if they disagree then they are going to tell you. You can have a debate and that’s okay as long as you are respectful.
But it is also important to me to get stuff done. It’s exciting seeing what you’ve been working on for the last six weeks come together and start to become something. When you achieve something, it makes all the bits that were confusing before tie together. We wrote a book! We created a whole new job for someone! We did important research!
I learned a lot about how research works in the real world with actual people and important social issues. The first project I did I learned everything as I was going along. It just started to make sense – it was like … “Oh okay, two weeks ago we thought of a question, and then we broke that down into five different questions and those questions have been answered by the people who filled in the survey and we’ve got some answers to the first question!” I learned how difficult some bits can be – like how some private schools and Catholic schools didn’t want to talk about certain topics. And then I learned about how important it is to get the survey out to as many different people as possible and to highlight what didn’t come up because that’s still just as interesting. I learned a lot about how to analyse what we found out. Analysis is something you’d think would be really boring but we did it in really fun ways so that it was memorable, like we had the data up all over the walls or had all the things people said all cut up and put them into different piles instead of just reading through them. I also learned a lot about how to run events – I feel like I could organise a whole festival from what I’ve learned! And I learned to ask for the things I needed – people are usually nice and help if they can.
By the end of the sex education project, our group had spent ages talking about sex education and learning from each other, but we also knew how much we weren’t taught in schools and how important it is that the education we get about sex is good. At the Conversation for Action, the adults agreed with pretty much everything we said. I feel like when we first sat down they probably thought, “This is just a thing that we have to do” but then when we started speaking they were like, “Oh they actually have real opinions that are just as good as ours.” It was nice to see them scribbling down when we were saying things, it was like, “Wow! They are actually taking notes on what we’re saying.”
And I grew in confidence in public speaking, which is just not a thing you get to do very often at that age unless you are head boy or head girl. I was doing it all the time, whether it was in a group of ten people organising an activity or actually doing the gatherings and conferences. Who speaks at a conference when they are 15? If you said to me now, “There’s a conference tomorrow could you come and speak?”, I’d check my shifts at work and be like, “Yeah let’s go, cool!” It’s crazy, young people so rarely get to present to adults and have them properly listening and I think that’s the main thing that has built my confidence a lot, that people actually listened to me.
I’m not so involved now because of work, but I know that it’s there and I could be involved. I got an email from one of the staff about a meeting and when I said I couldn’t go to the meeting she said, “Do you fancy catching up anyway?” and I was like, “Yes!” I always really loved those little personal emails when staff remember that we’ve been on holiday or remember we’ve had a test, it’s so nice. Even some of my friends won’t ask me like “How was that?” and then I get a wee email from YEA and it makes me happy.
I don’t see the other people who were involved every week any more, but we have a group chat and we all look after each other. There have been people who have been through big things and it was crazy how involved we all were. Like when Myada had really difficult things in her life and people were checking in and seeing what was happening. And obviously we knew that the staff were also checking in loads and that’s so nice to see. She’s my friend, and to see an adult who isn’t her mum or a parent taking care of her in the way I’d want her to be taken care of is so nice.
Now I’m 18 and pretty different to that shy 12-year-old. I’m confident in my actions and I’ve got a mind of my own – my mum might say too much of a mind of my own! I’m not smarter than other people who are 18 but I feel like I’ve got a better understanding of people. I know what words to use with what people and I kind of say things how they are rather than try to sugar-coat things. Now I know that my opinion is completely valid. I think that’s from being involved in YEA.
Christina’s story
This section of the chapter is a reflective piece based on my experiences as a participation worker. I worked at YEA from 2013 to 2019 as a participation worker and the project has a very special place in my heart. I have now moved on and work to promote young people’s participation in academic settings, including the TRIUMPH project with the University
