My time as a Young Consultant

Tags: ymca | young consultants

It's kind of scary when I think that it's been 12 months since last January, and it's even scarier when I know that during that time I've been doing so many interesting things all over the country as a Young Consultant. Well there won't be a 13th for me as I hang up my myplace Support Team polo-shirt for the last time on the 31st, but looking back, I wonder where exactly did the time go?

 Well people do say time flies when you're having fun; I most certainly had an amazing time as a Young Consultant, from meetings in London to running sessions at the myplace youth festivals that  myself and the rest of the YC team had put together. It's been a massive collage of things I've been involved in during my time, and looks like it's going to take some time for me to update my CV.

When I started as a Young Consultant I brought with me experience about what young people want, and what means the most to them: this I had gained from what I had been doing at my youth club as part of its youth council, however it by no means made adjusting to the practice of work, and all the little administrative things attached to it any easier. Timesheets, Movement Diaries, simple things that needed doing each week, that despite their importance I'm sure everybody loathes doing - I know I did... but I hadn't the faintest idea 18 months ago that I would be travelling to London regularly to discuss youth engagement, visiting myplace projects that have young people fully engaged, and working with an amazing bunch of individuals with their own stories to tell.

These amazing individuals are of course the rest of the Young Consultants team, and although we've had our ups and downs, and people have come and gone, I don't think I would've chosen to work with any other group of people. Some people say they hate work, and usually the number one reason is their colleagues. Not me, I have great colleagues, and my boss is pretty cool too. Coupled with the £7 an hour pay, and the exclusivity - less than 30 young people have been Young Consultants - I'd say that's pretty darn good for my first paid employment.

One of the most difficult things for me, aside from writing this, was getting to grips with finding out: what is a Young Consultant? What are they supposed to do? Well when I started, back in January 09, I didn't have a clue; I don't think many people did - not surprising since this had never been done before. The idea of hiring young people probably un-nerved many in the support team and other connected agencies, and I know myself that before our first management team meeting we all were posed for confrontation, believing that the older members would see us as threat, with them perceiving us as ‘hoodies' with no positive input to the project. Thankfully our fears weren't realised, and with the outcome being extremely positive, we built on this by arranging regular meetings, and getting some of us, myself included, involved in the website development meetings to help increase awareness of the support team and the support it can offer both to projects and the young people themselves. Just a shame I couldn't stay awake during that meeting, I'll never live that down - one day I'll look back and laugh.

One of the things I have enjoyed the most has to be joining the website development team, as digital media of some form or another is what I am aiming to do in the future, taking a gap in my studies at Manchester Metropolitan University from a degree in Digital Media/Special Effects Technology. Universities stress that individual experience is just as important as the end qualification, and this was some experience none of my fellow students will be graduating with.

Having the opportunity to give a young person's perspective to the website was massively useful to the project, as it resulted in a much better website that was more user-friendly and began to include much more digital content such as videos showcasing projects' youth involvement. This should be set to continue with the web packs coming to projects soon that I and the Young Consultants communications team worked on.

The festivals in November were a massive accomplishment for the team and it was great to be a part of that. Sure not everything went to plan, when does anything? - but all the young people and the Leaders came away having had a good time, and learnt a lot through the sessions we put together. Surprisingly I had quite a good time running ‘How to make your myplace stand out' alongside John, and being asked by one of the project groups if we could repeat the session for their other colleagues and young people made my day.

Anyway, I have had an amazing time as a Young Consultant for this past year, and I wish the best of luck to all my colleagues, the myplace Support Team, and all the myplace Projects. Thank you for the experience.

Alex D-B
Young Consultant