On 30th April, the Future Forum brought together young people and senior leaders from across the environment sector for the first time.
The member organisations represented the diversity of the environment sector, including those with just a few staff as well as those with hundreds, as well as covering the breadth of the sector from those organisations focusing on climate education to those focusing on nature and biodiversity.
Future Forum is a Green Schools Revolution project hosted by SOS-UK to expand the influence of youth perspectives in the direction of UK environmental charities. SOS-UK facilitates discussions between organisations, recognising that young people represent our future and may some day become the CEOs of these charities themselves.
The meeting focused on looking ahead to better collaboration and youth leadership across the sector. The Future Forum aims to provide a platform for this, fostering conversation across organisations and providing young people with a platform to be heard by senior executives.
In April, the young people made two key pitches to leaders. They highlighted the importance of increasing access to opportunities for young people in the sector, perhaps through the creation of a joined-up platform for promoting such opportunities.
They also discussed how organisations can better listen to young people and support youth leadership in their organisations. Young people presented their ideas for a youth voice checklist of sorts, as a means for organisations to self-review where they are leading in the sector, and where they could learn from the approach taken by other organisations in the Forum.
Jamie Burrell, co-chair of the Future Forum, said, “The response by leaders to both ideas was positive, reflecting the need to have more of these conversations and progress these ideas further. We plan to engage both young people and the organisations in the coming weeks to develop these ideas ahead of the first in person Future Forum meeting in July.”
After all the hard work it has taken to get to this stage, the Future Forum co-chairs are very excited to see what the Forum does next and the impact it will have on the wider sector.
This event and the work of Green Schools Revolution would not be possible without the generosity of the #iwill Fund, a joint investment from The National Lottery Community Fund and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) which supports young people to access high quality social action opportunities.
