THT: How we can help you: Young people: Young Leaders: Where we're at

We offer a range of services throughout England, Scotland and Wales – many of them tailored to suit the varied needs of our diverse communities.

Young Leaders

Get involved with the Young Leaders project and help create innovative education projects about relationships, sex and sexual health.

In 2007 Terrence Higgins Trust launched the Young Leaders project to give young people the opportunity to get involved in educating their friends and peers about sex and relationships. Over the past year and a half Young Leaders from all over England have been accredited, or are working towards their accreditation in ‘Sex and Relationship Education’ and ‘Developing Group and Teamwork Communication Skills’. They too have awarded £90,000 worth of grant money and supported 100 projects, reaching a diverse range of young people.

Young Leaders Conference 2009

Beth On Saturday 28th February 2009 THT held its Young Leaders conference.

After re-uniting with everyone and looking at some of the regions’ excellent walls the conference began with a quick hello and some speeches from Sir Nick Partridge, Adam Norbury and Minister Dawn Butler.

the speakers

Sir Nick Partridge gave an amazing talk about his life, and the progress he has seen throughout it, imploring that things can only get better from where we stand now.

Adam Norbury told of his involvement with ‘Positive Voices’ and how they are trying to eradicate the stigma of living with HIV and AIDS by reaching out to young people through THT.

Dawn Butler talked about her work and experience within the government.

Then came the ‘higher or lower’ game with the “glamorous assistant” – this was actually an excellent icebreaker to learn some interesting facts about sexual health, some rather interesting ones concerning rats!

brucie

We then had a panel discussion, some amazing questions were asked and some key subjects were brought into the discussion. We had some great responses too and this meant Young Leaders know better now what is being done to challenge stigmas and stereotypes, but they also know of good work that is being done by groups like the Pleasure Project, NAZ project and Gendered Intelligence.

panel discussion

Lunch consisted of many visits to the diary room and various stalls where we had the opportunity to contribute to things like ‘the great wall of vagina’ and ‘sexy tips’.

Young leaders branding The showcase of the projects gave a great indication of how worthwhile the grant funding is and the amazing work of the projects that are given them. They also showed the creativity of tackling SRE with DVDs and music tracks.

The two workshops I attended were Sex and the Media and Sex and Pleasure.

Claire Bale’s Sex and the Media workshop was really good. It gave us a chance to vocalise our own opinions on how the media affects us as young people – she brought up many points and really stimulated the discussion.

hoodie The Sex and Pleasure workshop run by Anne Philpott and Arushi Singh gave some good ideas on how to get people to open up and talk about the positive and pleasurable side to this. They gave tips and ideas to make SRE sexy and interesting.

After all the board photos, evaluations and closing of the conference it was time to say goodbye and call it an end to the day.

It makes you wonder what we will have achieved by 2010.

Jenn The residential was a great way to get to know all the other young people across the UK that believe just as passionately as you in young people's right to get sufficient sex and relationship education! Regardless of regional differences, we worked together throughout the weekend - as a national board we began our preparation for the '09 Conference and worked on the marketing opportunities for the young leaders project. We also did several team-building activities including trying to get the a group of 10 over a 7 or 8ft wall! It was grreeat :).

Jenna The resi was amazing fun, we really bonded as a board and managed to have a great laugh whilst learning more about ourselves and each other. It was a great chance to socialise with other people who do the same thing as we do and we participated in loads of activities such as rock climbing, team building exercises as well as activities such as a mock Jeremy Kyle, exploring healthy relationships.

Tahnee The residential was great fun and was a way for us as young leaders to bond and come out of our shells. We found everyone’s strong and weak points and it helped lot. :-) I think that it was such a great opportunity to go on the residential, it was a very fun experience. The best part was getting to know everyone on our board very well, also as I had never met people with different sexualities it was a good way to understand people better, TEAM BUILDING was excellent fun am was funny to see Camilla laughing like a hyena throughout the wall climbing (HILARIOUS). HAD GREAT FUN!!!!

Julie-Anne We have been learning A LOT about SRE topics which has help me loads. I now know and understand different types of contraception’s, safer sex and what a healthy relationship should be. We’ve also just been through what seemed like thousands of applications which were really difficult to decide which ones to accept but the board came to an agreement with 4 main projects, many of the applications were good but the four stood out with different and interesting ideas but were still youth led at the same time.