Berkeley Foundation provided My Life My Say (MLMS) with a £20,000 Development Grant in 2024, with the aim to help scale and boost youth voices in the charity’s work.
Our funding supported the delivery of four Democracy Cafés in partnership with other Berkeley partner organisations: New Horizon Youth Centre, Groundwork London and Youth Concern, which in total engaged more than 90 young people from a range of backgrounds in-person, building key leadership skills and producing youth-led solutions on a range of issues.
In delivering these Democracy Cafés in partnership with youth organisations, the events were able to reach a greater number of unengaged or underrepresented groups. The Democracy Café delivered with Groundwork London took a skills-first approach to building key leadership skills. The discussion focussed on climate change, and one attendee ended the session by noting “I like [discussing] climate change more now, you’ve inspired me.”
A Democracy Café with New Horizon Youth Centre built key skills in 20 young Londoners experiencing homelessness. This café also acted as a focus group, creating a casual, youth-led space for these young people to discuss housing and homelessness. A summary of the discussions was written into a report by MLMS and shared with key stakeholders by New Horizon Youth Centre.
Give an X Toolkit
Our funding also allowed My Life My Say to create a Give an X toolkit, distilling the learnings, successes and methods of the 2024 Give an X campaign. The campaign encourages young people to vote in elections and making their voices heard.
The toolkit can be easily adapted for all elections moving forward, uniting the democracy sector and bringing new partners on-board the voter registration campaign, especially in advance of Scottish, Welsh and local London elections in 2026 during which the Give an X campaign will return.
The Squad Leadership Programme
Finally, the grant has allowed for the upscaling of The Squad Leadership Programme, providing more spaces for young people on the Programme, a more targeted and considered recruitment process with a Squad branding refresh.
This growth doesn’t just allow the programme to reach more young leaders, but it allows the fostering of a Squad Leadership community, with leaders helping each other in building projects, campaigns, social organisations and sharing growth opportunities through peer-to-peer engagement opportunities such as Squad Day which brought 35 Squad Leaders together in London for a day of workshops, skill-building and community engagement.
One Squad Leader commented:
“These opportunities have really built my confidence in the world of youth democratic participation and taught me the value of saying ‘yes’ even when it means stepping out of my comfort zone. Most importantly, the COMMUNITY that My Life My Say has built is truly amazing and it was so heartwarming to see so many people who have genuinely become my friends through the Squad.”
My Life My Say is also one of our Year 4 Resilience Fund partners, and we’re looking forward to working closely with them over the next three years to help build organisational resilience, making sure the charity can continue its important work to foster young leaders and encourage voting.