The National Youth Agency - End Child Poverty Activities

End Child Poverty Activities

So what’s involved and what’s at stake? To raise awareness and understanding of some of the issues The National Youth Agency has written these easy to use and fun activities for use with young people and youth groups.

Please let us know of any other activities that work for you in helping your group think about poverty issues and we’ll add them to this list. E-mail Andy Hopkinson.

Also of interest...

True or False

Aim:

To help young people learn a few facts about child poverty, how widespread it is even in the UK, and about its effects

You need:

A large-ish room

What to do:

This is a simple and fun activity to help get young people active and moving while hopefully picking up some information about child poverty. Have the group stand in the centre of a room (they will need a small amount of room to run or walk around). You are going to read out a series of Facts about child poverty – most of which you can find in the End Child Poverty campaign materials (see weblink above). Most of the facts will be ‘true’ and others you can make up as ‘false’.

After each ‘fact’ is read out, the young people should run to a designated corner of the room if they think it is ‘true’ or the opposing corner if they think it is ‘false’. You could try repeating the exercise to see how many facts they have remembered. You can decide on the true/false ratio yourself – you could include only ‘true’ facts and see how many young people are surprised by this revelation at the end. Discuss why they were so surprised. Is poverty generally seen as something that only affects Third World countries?

If It Happened To Me

Aim:

To discuss issues around child poverty and envisage how it would feel to be in such a situation yourself (note: be sensitive to the fact that for some of the young people in your group, the issues being discussed may be a reality).

You need:

Paper and pens for note taking. Pieces of paper (or Post-it notes) for voting.

What to do:

Divide the group into four or five smaller groups. Each group is then given a subject – something that is likely to be affected by poverty. These could be Food, Heating, Education, Socialising, Clothing, Housing and others. Each group should discuss their issue and think about how their lives would suffer if – taking Food as an example – they did not have enough to eat or had to rely on cheap and unhealthy food as their only source of nutrition. Likewise, what would be the impact of being unable to afford books, transport and trips to school, to not be able to go out, to have to wear inadequate clothing or shoes that are too small, or to be cold during the winter because heating bills are too high.

Each group should then put on a short presentation to the others as to why their case is most deserving of government help. At the end, all the young people can vote for whichever case they feel is the most worthy. They cannot vote for themselves. As well as putting the effects of child poverty in order of priority, this exercise should help young people really think about what it would be like ‘if it happened to me’.

The News

Aim:

To build communication skills by developing short news bulletins based on a report about child poverty

You need:

Tables and chairs, a prop box (optional), paper and pens, newspapers

What to do:

Gather together a few newspaper or magazine reports that feature child poverty. This could include both negative and positive stories. Ask the young people to form pairs and give each a report to work on. Their aim is to prepare a ‘news bulletin’ to share the information with others. Allow about 20 minutes for them to prepare this, and while they do this, set up a mock studio – a desk with two chairs is ideal.

Invite each pair to perform their news bulletin to the others, and then facilitate a review session to look at not just how the pair coped, but at the story they delivered. What made the issue memorable, and how easy was it to decide which bits of the report should go into the bulletin? Move on to discuss how child poverty is portrayed in the media. Is it a sympathetic portrayal? Is it a portrayal that associates the poor with crime and stigmatises them accordingly (think of TV programmes such as Shameless as an example)?

In My Opinion

Aim:

To encourage young people to reflect on what they know about child poverty and to express individual opinions

You need:

Nothing!

What to do:

Ask the young people to sit in a circle. Set the rule that only one person can speak at a time and explain that the point of the round is to listen to everyone’s views about child poverty. Begin the round by starting: “Before we finish I would like to say…” Choose something that relates to child poverty, the End Child Poverty campaign or something relevant that has happened during the session.

The young person to your right should then say: “What you are saying is…” repeating what you have said and continuing “and before we finish I would like to say…” This should go around the circle with each person repeating their neighbour’s observation and adding their own, until everyone has had a say.

The following five exercises have been adapted from The NYA’s successful Act By Right set of activities for youth participation, and offer advice on campaigning and publicising on behalf of End Child Poverty:

Get The Picture?

Aim:

Design a poster that will raise awareness of child poverty

You need:

About 30 minutes, paper and pens (preferably more than one colour)

What to do:

Get into small groups and let your imagination run riot. You need to think of slogans, colours and designs, and then match all three together. Divide yourselves into groups of three or four, and decide what will make a good poster. What sort of poster makes you stop and look in the high street? Consider the audience you’re trying to reach – is it young or older people?

After 15 minutes of brainstorming, bring your ideas to the group as a whole. Decide which are the best to take forward. Is there common ground? Can a compromise be reached? What ‘extras’ can you put onto your poster apart from obvious stuff? Contact details are a must, and perhaps website links to the End Child Poverty homepage. Think about where you can place your posters – and don’t forget to get permission to do so.

Putting It In Print

Aim:

Write a general information leaflet that supports your cause.

You need:

About 40 minutes, pens and lots of bits of paper.

What to do:

To follow up a poster campaign, it’s useful to have a ready source of information that you can send out, or give to people. It shouldn’t be too long – you just need to get the main points across. Write down loads of ideas on the bits of paper and then, as a group, separate them into three categories – Essential, Important and Desirable. If there isn’t a unanimous decision, have a vote.

One Essential point you should include is that the government has already said it wants to halve and then eliminate child poverty – but that changes still need to happen to make this possible. When you write the leaflet, focus first on the bits you agreed were Essential. To make it easy to read, divide it into bitesize chunks with headings taken from the Essential list. If there aren’t enough Essential items, then it’s time to recruit some from the Important or Desirable list. Just make sure you don’t repeat yourself.

Spinning A Line

Aim:

Create a press release designed to raise awareness of child poverty among local newspapers and media.

You need:

Paper and pens, around 45 minutes and plenty of inspiration

What to do:

To make an impact in the media, you need to tailor your message to suit the media you are targeting. That could mean a range of similar press releases, all containing similar information, but expressed in a slightly different way. Local newspapers will appreciate brief information and photo with a local interest focus. Magazines with specific subject areas are not so concerned about the locality, more on the issue. Government officers, councillors etc will benefit from more in depth information, and statistics.

Press releases are all about keeping things simple. The first thing to come up with is a headline, such as ‘Poor housing makes life unbearable for kids’. Your group needs to thrash out the structure of each press release. Perhaps you can assign smaller sub-groups to tailor each individual press release. Remember to start with a broad statement, making clear what the story is about, and then flesh it out in subsequent paragraphs. Add a quote from one or two of you, and don’t forget your contact details at the end.

Hitting The Bullseye

Aim:

To use our promotional tools to their best advantage

You need:

About 30 minutes

What to do:

If we really want to End Child Poverty, we must ensure our message is going to the right people. Between you, decide on a number of officials who might have an interest – supportive or otherwise – to the issue you are concerned with. It’s not just media and the general public – the list might include councillors, MPs, housing officers, health authority officials, schools and others. If you engage in a quick roleplay exercise, with one of you putting himself or herself into the shoes of a busy MP for example, you may learn more about the potential problems you’ll face, and you can use this to stimulate ideas on how to adapt your promotional tools to cope. For example, could you tailor your information so that it particularly addresses the concerns that the police might have (tackling anti-social behaviour brought on by poverty, for example), or might tally with something a councillor has stated in a meeting reported in the paper?

Let’s list some of the promotional tools at your disposal:

The press release
Promotional photograph
The internet
Poster campaign
Information leaflets

Now, as a group, try to work out which of those five would be best suited to the officials you have identified (not forgetting various types of media and general public).

By thinking through the ‘weapons’ with which we can ‘arm’ ourselves, and the ‘targets’ we wish to ‘hit’, we should soon realise that our approach should depend on our audience. From our existing knowledge base and the impetus that the roleplay has provided, you can draw up a list of those you should contact to support your campaign, with specific references to how they should be approached. For example, it can be very valuable to have significant local authority figures energised and interested in what you are trying to achieve. Not only do they bring power, but they can make your campaign seem more authentic to those who might be undecided. Your local council should be able to tell you which officials hold responsibility for various things, and staff on your local paper might also be willing to share some valuable contacts with you – but make sure they get your story too!

Back Off!

Aim:

To make the best use of feedback and keep friendly communication going with your contacts

You need:

Just paper, yourselves and plenty of space

What to do:

This is a short and fun exercise to help you decide how to follow up on your publicity campaign. Naturally, you will want to maintain your contacts, but at the same time you don’t want to overplay your case or else those people will start trying to avoid your calls. Back Off! is an exercise originally designed to help young women look at typical social situations and make risk assessments, but it will work just as well for you if you’re prepared to do some more roleplay.

First of all, devise several methods of contacting people, some direct and some more casual. Write down a list of examples on separate sheets of paper. They could include these:

a phone call;
an e-mail to a business e-mail address;
a request for an appointment;
cold-calling (visiting someone’s office and asking to see them);
letters to someone’s home address;
e-mails to someone’s home e-mail address;
having a demonstration outside someone’s office to ram your point home; or
waiting outside and approaching someone in the street.

Place a sheet marked OKAY at one end of the room and another sheet marked BACK OFF at the other. Hand out your list of contact methods (see above). Now three or four of you must play the role of the contacts (councillors / journalists / service managers / head teachers etc). How do you think those people will react when approached in the above ways? After discussing each point, place each idea somewhere between the OKAY and BACK OFF markers. OKAY is where you would feel most comfortable, BACK OFF is unacceptable, and any you are not sure about should go in the middle. Think about how you can be diplomatic to all, judging each case on its own merits and circumstances.