On January 16, over 180 Team London Young Ambassadors from 25 schools across London, came together for City Hall’s Social Integration Youth Summit. Mete Coban MBE opened the event by sharing stories about how he became passionate about social integration, and what motivated him to start making a change.
Social integration helps our communities spend time together and learn from one another. Sometimes this is an after-school programme and sometimes it is a local sports event.
It was brilliant to meet hundreds of diverse young Londoners at Team London's Youth Summit - a necessary initiative equipping young people with the skills to lead change in their communities,” says Mete. “I'm proud to have played a part in what was a memorable event.
At the summit, the Young Ambassadors joined workshops exploring social integration, learning who it benefits, and how they can make contributions in their local areas. This gave them the opportunity to start their own social action plans, and pledge to developing their ventures.
Some great ideas included cultural days, with the tagline “put your phone away, it’s culture day”, new day trips for students, such as Russell Group universities and visiting care homes as a way of building relationships with the older generation.
One of the presentations focused social integration during gentrification, this is important because as new people move into communities, they often forget about the people who lived there before and might not see they are being driven out. Their social action plan was titled “Sleep on beds not on social issues”.
Team London Young Ambassadors is the Mayor’s school volunteering programme which connects young Londoners with their communities through social action.
The next Team London Young Ambassador Youth Summit in April will continue discussing social integration with more great guest speakers and young people.
Team London Young Ambassadors is match funded by the GLA and the #iwill Fund. The #iwill Fund is made possible thanks to £50 million joint investment from The National Lottery Community Fund and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to support young people to access high quality social action opportunities.