Recognising and celebrating young people’s achievements
Youth Awards play a significant part in the work of SCYAP, and this is aligned in the first instance to one of the Projects key outcomes: Young People will improve their social skills, confidence to learn, through undertaking national accredited awards and volunteering. Learning happens in many contexts and from the perspective of professional youth work we recognise that young people develop and learn with each other within the community. Attending school is one aspect to how young people learn but it is only one dimension to learning, and SCYAP recognises how the process of community learning and development compliments and enriches young people’s wider educational experiences. The Summer Programme 2026 has facilitated a really wide array of learning and development opportunities for local young people, and it has been a very rewarding experience for the staff team to have been part of those young people’s learning journeys. In particular I would want to highlight and celebrate the 10-13’s Group who undertook the Survival and Bushcraft programme, including the overnight shelter building activity in the Rough Castle Woods. Our ongoing partnership with the Well Wild Project has delivered really significant impacts for all of the ten young people who took part in this particular accredited award programme. I am very grateful to the professionalism and collaborative approach undertaken by John Wells at his Well Wild Woods site (Johns Woods) and the way he utilises the outdoors and bushcraft as facilitators of personal growth and encouraging the learning of skills and attributes which young people can take away into other aspects of their lives. In our recent evaluation discussions John Wells commented:
The Young people involved gained so much confidence & personal growth. By the end of the summer programme every young person who attended the Well Wild sessions left the woods a better version of themselves with life skills that they will surely take with them as they grow into individual citizens.
It was evident as the sessions went on that young people had started building more trusting relationships with one another, friendships were growing and you could see them having to rely on one another at times, depending on each other’s work, especially at the survival overnight camp.
This approach can best be described as experiential learning and it thrives in the natural classroom that has no walls.
We are now supporting young people to complete their peer assessments and personal reflection sections of their Dynamic Youth Awards and a really important aspect to this is young people receiving positive encouragement and recognition from their peers, this really does build their confidence and self-esteem and strengthen their relationships with their peers. Through our recent development day and the reviewing of our development plan for the next three years it was agreed that we need to confirm a good progression pathway for young people who get regularly involved with SCYAP. In summary this is about providing opportunities for individual young people to begin by participating with local youth action activities, then begin to help out and volunteer and eventually potentially taking on greater responsibilities and leadership roles, and perhaps even becoming a sessional paid member of staff. This really is about building community capacity and empowering local young people to have greater responsibility with an increased and significant role with the development of their own local community. In this respect I would like to congratulate Leo Cierpikowski who has just completed his Gold Youth Achievement Award and who presented his peer mentoring work to an invited audience at the Hub on 4th August. Leo was also employed as a sessional youth worker throughout the Summer Programme, and he provides an excellent role model for other young people, especially in terms of how you can progress your involvement through undertaking youth awards and giving to the community through volunteering.
There is a second strand to the SCYAP Youth action approach, where in addition to the personal development and attainment opportunities, young people are also able to make a positive contribution to their local community. We have seen this on a regular basis with our environmental improvement and community arts projects throughout Camelon and Tamfourhill. Over the Summer programme 2026 the Group were involved with two creative community development projects supported by our Community artist and design worker Sarah Diver Lang. We had the wonderful active travel procession along the route of the Tamfourhill Totem Pole trail on the towpath of the top canal and also the creation of our community treasurers online trail. Both of these projects celebrate the assets within our community and encouraged young people to improve and celebrate aspects of the local area. These projects are also well aligned to our first Key outcome: Young People will have better connections with the wider community. Sarah commented in her evaluation feedback that :
The Canal active travel procession ensured there was lots of engagement with the outdoors, this was an essential part of the programme to enhance creativity through creative workshops and wellbeing and through walks and foraging materials. Participants were thanked and celebrated for their contributions aiming to increase pride and recognise the impact of their work for the wider community.
Participants led on the direction and format of the Community Treasurers project, designing the programme during the development – increasing confidence and seeing impact of their participation through active projects. Participants during the three-day workshop led on deciding which community treasure they wanted to highlight ensuring their voices were heard. The walk helped build relationships and engagement with spaces as well as health and wellbeing.
Please visit the totem pole trail : Great News for SCYAP – Safer Communities Youth Action Project
Please visit the Community Treasurers online trail: https://www.sarahdiverlang.com/localtreasures
For further information on the National Youth Awards and their process of progression please visit: https://www.youthscotland.org.uk/awards/ SCYAP successfully also utilises these awards in our work with local schools and they are an ideal way of linking the school curriculum, with the community and facilitating the positive outcomes of experiential learning.
And finally, I would like to sign off with the voice of the young people who travelled along their different but complimentary routes through the SCYAP Sumer Programme Awards journey:
- I feel more confident now and I was more assertive at the overnight survival camp.
- I am much better able to speak up for myself, and I can confidently give instructions to other people when working on a team task.
- I am able to say things I wouldn’t normally be comfortable saying and was able to speak about an individual snoring at the overnight camp.
- I got to meet new people throughout the programme and got to know them better.
- I better understand the transitions, and I have got to know people that I will be going to High school with,
- Yeah the overnight survival has changed me as I couldn’t bring and use my phone as much
- The overnight programme at Johns Woods have really improved my resilience
- Building the overnight den really showed good teamwork
Safer Communities Youth Action Project 