A Hope Hack is a day-long workshop that aims to give young people aged 15-25 a voice and focuses on their hopes for the future. This involves groups discussing their thoughts and solutions on issues that affect them, their lives and their communities.
Over the last two years, the Hope Collective have been running a series of Hope Hack events across the length and breadth of the UK. The Hope Collective formed to support the campaign for Damilola Taylor, a 10-year-old boy who wrote of his hope to change the world, shortly before his untimely death in 2000. Hope Hack events honour his memory by dedicating the campaign to young people and their aspirational stories of ambition and hope. The Hope Collective aim to establish real change that enables the UK’s most vulnerable communities to be free from poverty, violence and discrimination.
Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) across the UK organise these events for their local area, giving young people the chance to work with each other in workshops to generate ideas on solutions to a key issue in the community.
During the event, the young people split into smaller workshop groups to discuss a key topic. Each group covers something different, out of the following:
- Mental Health and Wellbeing - The provision of support for young people.
- Community Safety - Features of the community that ensure young people feel safer.
- Youth Voice and Influence - The benefits of giving young people a voice and the ability to influence policy.
- Diverse Experiences - How 'who you are' affects how safe you feel.
- Sports and other activities - What activities work best - how do we ensure inclusion?
- Life Skills - Real world learning, education and support.
- Aspirations and Opportunities - Goals, career ambitions, hopes for the future.
Each group will have the opportunity to present their ideas to local leaders and the wider audience towards the end of the event. Locally, this feedback will inform our future work and help us to understand what young people think would be the greatest solutions to problems in our local community.
The ideas and solutions from the hacks are also incorporated into a national report, written by the Hope Collective, to create the biggest needs assessment into what young people think a fairer society looks like, what the current challenges are for young people, and what solutions would drive long lasting change. In terms of the national picture, this report will be used in decision-making and policy, allowing the government to hear the voices of young people.
