Safe Surroundings

Here's what another of our team wrote about her experience.

Safe Surroundings, Peer Mediation (Feltham Young Offenders)

For me sustainability work with young people is in part about raising and developing awareness of the impact of lifestyle on the carrying capacity of the planet. One aspect of this education is the exploration of practices and values alternative to mainstream consumerism, including recycling, energy saving and production, and community gardening. Another aspect is the facilitation of young people's creativity and empowering them to work towards and find solutions to environmental problems.

The Millennium Volunteer and BTCV Wildlife Garden project at Feltham Young Offenders Institution in London was just this kind of project. I proposed the idea to Prison Officers and to BTCV, who awarded a £5,174 'People's Place' grant. BTCV wrote:

"The Volunteers are to make a wildlife area in the grounds of the Young Offenders Institution around the block for new inmates. The garden will provide practical opportunities for young volunteers to become involved in environmental issues. Hopefully the volunteers can continue their volunteering in the community (through Millennium Awards), potentially reducing the risk of re-offending. The wider local community will be encouraged to become involved by mentoring the young volunteers, offering training, work experience etc. "

Another feature of this work with young people is sustainability of the project itself; it must engage, educate and generate the next generation of participants, who will inherit such resources as there are and who will build on current awareness and achievements. Peer led work and visible successes are very effective in engaging disaffected young people in deprived areas (both urban and rural).

The 'Safe Surroundings' project, led and funded by UK Youth, trained a core group of young people to undertake environmental audits around their homes, schools and youth clubs. Those young people, with the support of their youth services, then cascaded the training to other young people in their locale, and I supported a number of young auditors for London Youth's Millennium Volunteer Project.

The information collected during the audits was used to identify shortcomings in local planning and service provision, to collect evidence of neglect and environmental degradation and to try to identify some of the causes. The process and information generated raised awareness of the environment (including build environment), existing services and the needs of the whole community. The information was then used to lobby local government to rationalise and improve on current resources.

Part of the process included consulting with and presenting findings to the local community, thus giving young people (many of whom would be working with detached youth workers) a positive role in their communities and, hopefully, a sense of agency. London Youth and UK Youth believed that:

"One strength of the project is that the consensus of the community is gained for the campaign, thus making a presentation to local authorities more persuasive."

However, because of the complex and interdependent relationship between the material and ideological circumstances in which we find ourselves, this is only part of the story in relation to sustainability. A truly sustainable society is one whose social fabric renews and sustains its self, and whose diversity increases its chances of survival through times of difficulty, crisis and upheaval. A society with partisan loyalties; divided along lines of class, culture, religion or race; with little or no ability to cope constructively and creatively with conflict is not sustainable.

For this reason I am citing another project I co-developed: A six-week Peer Mediation course for young people, delivered on behalf of LEAP Confronting Conflict (a London based conflict resolution organisation). Young people volunteered to undertake six weeks of training in Peer Mediation and then facilitate mediation work amongst their peers within their communities. The project started in 1994 and the first six-week course concluded with the first national Peer Mediation Conference, which was attended by participants and speakers from schools and projects all over the UK.

I have continued to undertake conflict resolution and anti-bullying work with prison officers and inmates, with detached and club based youth workers, and with young people since then.