Our support for young people in Coventry and Warwickshire
We’re supporting the young people of Coventry and Warwickshire through a number of projects designed to empower local young people. We are particularly focusing on young people living with the effects of socio-economic deprivation.
These projects sit alongside the University’s Widening Participation and Outreach programmes Link opens in a new windowwhich support progression to Higher Education.
Background
Young people in the UK face a challenging outlook, with the legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic, a “cost of living crisis” and declining funding for public services. This is manifested in high levels of child poverty, declining mental health and wellbeing and growing disparities in educational outcomes. These effects have been acutely felt by communities across the country, throughout Coventry and Warwickshire and in neighbourhoods close to the University of Warwick, including in areas of socio-economic disadvantage in neighbouring Tile Hill and Canley. We are committed to being a good neighbour, supporting the region and localities in which we sit and making Coventry and Warwickshire a better place to live, work and study.
Our aims
- To empower young people to take control of projects and decisions which affect their lives at a local level
- To support young people to build social capital which benefits both the individual young people and their communities
- To build young people’s voice and agency – giving them the skills and confidence to speak up on issues which are important to them
Our active and planned projects
UNESCO schools network
We are supporting the UNESCO Associated Schools Network (ASPnet) which connects more than 12,000 schools in 182 countries with a common goal of building peace in the minds of children and young people. Through concrete actions, member schools promote the ideals of UNESCO valuing rights and dignity, gender equality, social progress, freedom, justice and democracy, respect for diversity and international solidarity. Our aim is to sign up 70 local schools in 2024/25.
Coventry Pupil Parliament and Warwickshire Youth Conference
We have hosted these events with our partners, the Participation team at Coventry City Council and the Child Friendly team at Warwickshire County Council and will continue to support both events in 2025. These events are youth-led and are designed to give young people (Primary age in Coventry and Secondary age in Warwickshire) a say in identifying the key issues that are important to them.
Reading and literacy programme
We are working with the University Student Literacy Society and local schools to deliver an annual project across the Year 6 to Year 7 transition, which supports young people to adapt to change and engage them more with reading. Literacy is an important element of social capital and vital to young people’s success in education and longer-term outcomes.
Mental Wellbeing Champions
We are working with placement students from the Psychology Department, alongside two local secondary schools in Canley and Tile Hill, Tile Hill Community Partnership and ThinkHigher to develop a sustainable model of pupil-led mental wellbeing support. The aim of this project is to build voice and agency and empower young people.
Public speaking and debating
This project will seek to build confidence and oracy skills, identified by a recent Sutton Trust reportLink opens in a new window) as a key life skill missed by young people from less affluent backgrounds.
We will work with young people in 8 local schools, one in each parliamentary constituency area in Coventry North West, Coventry South, Coventry East, Kenilworth, Leamington, Bedworth and Nuneaton. The project will establish debating clubs for KS3 pupils, targeting those who would usually lack the confidence to speak up.
Canley and Tile Hill Youth Forum
We plan to support the establishment of a Youth Forum in Canley and Tile Hill to create a mechanism for young people to have a voice in organising and planning at community level. We will initially work with secondary schools in these neighbourhoods. Our aim is to feed into a Youth Summit at which the young people will host a group of local decision makers to shape future youth voice mechanisms, to operate in the neighbourhood.
To find out more about any of these projects, contact our .