Engaging Children and Young People

2 May 2013

This page contains advice for your work with young people if you'd like to:

• Engage with young people on stalls and at events
• Involve young people in your local group
• Go into schools and youth clubs to represent Friends of the Earth

You'll also need to read the Safeguarding page, to ensure the young people you work with are kept safe.

About the Youth and Education Network

Friends of the Earth's Youth and Education Network is a national network of local group members and supporters with an interest in engaging young people in the environment.

If you share this interest, you can simply join as a member to receive newsletters about our activities, resources, campaigns and training.

If you plan to work directly with young people you'll need to join the network as a 'school visitor' or 'educator', depending on the frequency of your visits into schools and youth clubs (see below).

If you have any questions about working with young people you can contact [email protected] You can also join the Youth and Education Hub to post questions or resource requests, share ideas or join discussions.

Engaging young people at stalls and events

When you talk to young people when their families/parents are present, you still need to consider safeguarding but you do not need to join the Youth and Education Network.

There are resources and ideas for attracting young people and children to your stalls on the Youth and Education Network website.

Young people joining your group

It's fine for young people aged 14-18 to join your group. You just need to obtain parental permission before granting them membership, or before they join you on campaigning activities.

There are detailed guidelines here on young people joining local groups.

Going into schools and youth clubs

Joining the Youth and Education Network

If you want to work with children or young people on behalf of Friends of the Earth when their parents are not present (e.g. in a school or at a youth club), you need to join the Youth and Education Network.

You can join as a school visitor if you wish to work in schools or youth clubs up to 3 times per year. You can join as an educator if you will be going in up to once per week or 4 times in a month. 

School visitors need to fill in their details, read our online child protection training and pass a quiz about it. Educators also need to provide referees. Once you have passed, you will be issued with a certificate.

We believe that the most effective way to keep the young people you work with safe is to provide child protection training and guidance. Only if you are working with young people more frequently than the above might you need a CRB check.

Code of Conduct

Friends of the Earth has safeguarding guidelines for local groups, which apply whenever you are working with children, young people and vulnerable adults. 

The Networks' Code of Conduct extends these to cover times when you work with young people and their parents are not present. It includes:

• always being supervised by an adult who is responsible for the children
• doing a risk assessment
• getting permission to take photos
• treating the young people with respect

You're only covered by Friends of the Earth Insurance if you adhere to the requirements given in the child protection training and in particular the code of conduct.

You can choose whether to contact schools and groups yourself and/or we can put them in touch with you when they contact Friends of the Earth.

Resources

You can find resources on the Youth and Education Networks' website to help you plan sessions and activities. This includes an action pack to use with The Bee Cause campaign.

You can download risk assessment sheets, photo consent forms and read our policies in more detail on our Child Protection page.

Friends of the Earth has webpages for schools and young people which you might find useful or want to tell schools about.

Keep in touch

For any more information, please contact [email protected] or the Youth and Education Hub. We'd also love to hear about your success stories and news from your work with young people.