Youth Board & Headteacher Conferences

the report stated:

“26% of students had received threats to hit or kick them or other threat of violence by another student. This is around half the number of students victimised in this way prior to the visit from Human Utopia.”

“Where schools have purchased a bigger package from Human Utopia (instead of the entry-level “taster” as that is what our budget was limited to) involving the full Human-Utopia “Heroes Journey”, the impact has been more sustained, and has increased general well-being within the school.

In terms of the PCC’s desire to take a generation out of crime, this is something I would like to see tested more thoroughly and am discussing with the OPCC. we look forward to a continued partnership with northamptonshire police and the schools of northamptonshire and looking forward to seeing you all soon.

Tell us about yourself:

I am in Year 10 so I’m in the first year of my GSCE’S. I’m relatively confident with my life and my future. In my spare time I enjoy listening to the Big Top 40 and visiting different tourist locations. I like to work independently however working as a team is far greater! I’ve always had an interest in pedagogy, photography and geography!

Tell us about why you become a hero:

I became a hero at the launch of the heroes programme in The Wellington Academy back in 2015. I never believed that I would get this far in the heroes journey with the simple reason because I didn’t know whether I would be good enough to be a hero.

The main reasons that I became a hero and the reasons why I am still in the heroes journey is because I want to support ALL of the students at the academy, not just the new and the young. I believe that it’s important to support everyone especially your peers with allowing them to be themselves as well as allowing them to be unique but more importantly allowing them to feel comfortable and to be understood for who they are.

Additionally, I became a hero because I wanted to develop ‘me as a person’. I’ve always known and i’ve always been told that to be able to  succeed you need to be able to be confident, communicative, respectful and understand that everyone is an individual. Furthermore, I became a hero to follow my dreams and be the person that I wanted to be.

Tell us about the impact of the heroes programme:

The heroes programme has been more successful that what we ever dreamed it would be! In our academy we’ve raised awareness with many of the pupils from Year 7 to Year 9 as well as the staff. In the upcoming terms we hope to be able to work with all the year groups to raise the awareness across the whole school emphasising that the academy is here to help the students and staff realise their full potential.

We’ve already helped so many pupils understand that they have so much potential in their life, they just have to change something or have to do something differently to be able to reach that ‘dream’ destination. Some of our Year 10’s have been working with the Year 8’s as part of a mentoring programme as well as some of the Year 9’s have been working with some of the Year 7’s. I believe its extremely important to link the year groups together. We’ve already seen so many students use these sessions to an advantage and they’ve really benefited from them hugely! We want our students to be equal in our academy as well as in the world of work, to make them better people.

Tell us how you’ve took it one step further:

After realising that the heroes programme had so much potential, last March I took this one step further with the assistance and guidance of Mrs Wales. I’ve led my own bonding sessions and training sessions to keep the heroes motivated and happy in the team. Not only does this help me, it helps the heroes work with each other effectively and in a different environment which they might not usually feel comfortable with. I’ve opened the heroes programme to the community by the use of the local radio station to explain to them what we do and how they can work alongside us and the impact of our work. I took a leadership role in the heroes programme because of the potential of the heroes and how they can work with other students to make themselves ‘stronger’.

I’ve helped organise many different sessions with the heroes, younger pupils of the academy and the primary academy. Tell me how you’ve kept it running: We’ve kept it running with little, near to no funding from the academy. We’ve opened our heroes programme to the community to get more of the community involved, we did this by the radio show and an open evening session. We’ve got more students involved which means more have been impacted by our work.

Additionally the mentoring programme that is being extremely successful is now the ‘talk’ of many of the members of staff in our academy. Finally, we’ve kept it running with getting more staff involved and having an impact on the staff as well. Without the support from the staff, the programme wouldn’t happen.

humanutopia run corporate courses throughout the year, pioneering specific educational agendas. Working in partnership with some of the UK’s leading organisations including UBS, SSAT and Business in the Community, we have successfully delivered a range of high impact conferences.

hope, confidence, happiness, relationships and employability skills

Working in partnership with some of the UK’s leading school chains and MATs we have run several inspirational headteacher conferences based on our ever conscious and ahead-of-the-game agendas – with one key ingredient – an inspirational group of young people that have volunteered as positive role models or Heroes within their school community.

By bringing together key decision makers and students in this way, it enables us to bridge the gap and address real life issues from the ground up and provides a space for possible solutions with those who care and are in the position to bring about real change.

Working in partnership with some of the UK’s leading organisations, we have successfully delivered a range of high impact conferences involving corporate volunteers and young people from multiple schools and challenging environments.

Be the Change is the first programme of its kind in the UK and focuses on raising the aspirations of local year nine students (13 years), helping them to remove barriers that make them disengaged at school and in life and providing them with life skills to help shape their future. It is a detailed and sustainable programme of activity designed to bring young people and business volunteers together on five occasions over the course of the school year, culminating in a celebration event at which the students are presented with certificates and meaningful work experience opportunities.

Amanda Menahem, HR Director, Hastings Direct said “We are proud to be at the forefront of something so transformational for students in our community. We do a lot of work already with our local schools and colleges to help improve employability prospects and indeed a number of local students have gone on to become colleagues. ‘Be the Change’ offers us the opportunity to help younger people in our community and with our colleagues’ involvement; we hope that we can make a real difference.”