Lewis Pummell joined the VRU's first Young People's Action Group in 2020. Two years on, and with an exciting opportunity on the horizon, he blogs about the initial challenges faced by the group and the growing importance of young people having a voice in discussions on tackling violence.
The Young People’s Action Group (YPAG) and what it means can be summarised by its motto: “Nothing about us without us”.
Our aim at the YPAG is to provide a collective youth voice regarding strategies and policy work for reducing violence in London. Our view is that young people should be in discussions about violence affecting young people – and over the last couple of years, that’s exactly what I’ve been involved in.
This perfectly leads on to why I applied to join the group when it was first formed in 2020.
I wanted to see change.
Before becoming a member of the YPAG, I had been involved in various campaigns and programmes, such as my local Youth Parliament, which sadly never saw our ideas and work acted upon. With various frustrations and disappointments stemming from this, I looked for new opportunities that would help me to make real sustainable change.
As somebody who has been a member of the first and second cohort of the YPAG, I have also been able to see its growth and development over the course of its first two years.
When I joined the induction day in 2020, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Looking back though, I feel like the wider Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) team weren’t sure what to expect either – it was the first time it had set up a young people’s group and was in the midst of a global pandemic too.
In my first few months at the YPAG I was given lots of training. From mental health to financial education, I was initially given the chance to build up my skills before being thrown in, which proved important.
However, throughout the whole year I was exposed to various different opportunities; from having discussions in New Scotland Yard, to being on a police ride-along and attending a meeting about youth unemployment at the House of Lords.
We were involved in lots of good work and it was both enjoyable and meaningful. There was only one real negative that I could say about my experience at the start: it was a bit stop-start. Sometimes it felt like there wasn’t a lot of organisation to our work because we relied on partnerships and collaborations and because of lockdown, this felt bit-piece at times. This could be explained by COVID and the national lockdowns affecting our ability to meet up as a team and develop the strong connections that we know are so important.
However, the second year, and moving out of the pandemic, the effectiveness of our team sky-rocketed.
We were all given a mentor to help us stay on track with our personal and professional goals. We each also received a bursary towards our goals which we could use if we wanted.
Finally, we ran our own social action projects on education and employment, youth work, parenting and policing.
This felt like there was more structure in what we were doing. On top of these changes though, we continued upon the positives from the previous year and expanding them to make a real impact.
We hosted events such as the Stronger Futures event in which we invited young people to City Hall to network with businesses. We attended and facilitated conferences, including one about Tackling Child Exploitation and also the first-ever London VRU Conference.
We worked with VRU funded programmes to provide feedback on their work and hold them to account on behalf of young people.
Overall this second year has felt more fulfilling, with us being able to meet much more regularly, work on our own projects more effectively, and just be more organised in general.
I look forward to what the new cohort of young people will look like and can achieve, without me there, with optimism for what the future holds for this programme.
Speaking on my development over these two years, I can demonstrate the impact that the YPAG has on its members in general.
At first, despite having prior experience in campaigning, I felt uncomfortable and didn’t utilise my skills very well. Even with the different training, in which I learned a lot, I still didn’t feel too comfortable and often didn’t speak up much and actually do what I applied to do.
Over time though, I broke out of my shell, and with a few different opportunities (especially at the start of Year Two) I found my feet in the team. I was networking with people, facilitating at the Tackling Child Exploitation Conference, co-hosting the LDN Filmmakers Event, leading workshops in the VRU Conference and I was being the outspoken version of myself that first applied.
Now this all leads to where I am now. Being at the end of the second year, I am moving on to study in the US on a financial aid package totalling $320,000 over the course of four years.
Within the application process, I drew upon my experiences in the YPAG, both in developing my skills and the work I had done.
I look back on my time with the YPAG and the opportunities I have been exposed to, and hope that more and more young people can be offered the same in the future.