GUC

Growing Up Connected An introduction to the work of the Citizenship Foundation

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The Citizenship Foundation works to strengthen democracy by developing citizens. We want young people to grow up informed, critical and engaged in a fair and inclusive society. No one should be less able to contribute. No one excluded; no one overlooked.

Our 21 year history has taught us that this is no easy task. But neither is it impossible. Today our 30 staff help to resource a front line of over 10,000 teachers working with 3 million young people. With contacts in 30 per cent of primary and 80 per cent of secondary schools, we help to bring ’citizenship’ to life — every day.

We have set ourselves three important goals: • maintaining the place and value of quality education for citizenship—through the kind of programmes you will read about here, working within and beyond school settings

• challenging political apathy by awakening people to the inescapable need for quality collective decisions: showing how they come about, stimulating action and inspiring new social leaders • building a shared sense of allegiance for the many diverse and isolated cultures in the UK, whether from ethnic, religious, class or wealth divides, our future as citizens is together and connected.

Like every charity we owe our success to our partners and supporters.

Please join us - the task is great and is now more important than ever.

Andy Thornton

Chief Executive Officer

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Penyrheol Comprehensive School winning the Magistrates’ Court Mock trial in 2008

Young people taking part in the Diversity and Dialogue Urban/Rural exchange

St Saviour’s Primary School take part in the Go-Givers Make a Difference Challenge

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event 2011

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Finalists of the Giving Nation TV Challenge 2007

First...

We know that ‘citizenship’ isn’t a word that gets most people excited. No one says to a friend, ‘You’re a great citizen!’ to cheer them up…

Yet citizenship is critical to the way we achieve our potential. It underpins our relationships: giving structure and consensus to the way we connect. In practice, society doesn’t just happen, it gets made. And making it well enables stability, cohesion and a good balance between liberty and equality.

We want them to be prepared to meet the growing number of challenges facing them, appreciating the connection between their rights, their responsibilities and their freedom.

But some people don’t have the freedom, or opportunity to progress. Some may have the chance to join in but don’t know how or lack the confidence. And some just feel like they’re on the outside. That troubles us, because when it comes to society, there really is no outside.

No non-members.

The Citizenship Foundation is here to stand up for quality citizenship and ensure that the next generation are ready to run the world.

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Go-Givers

Giving Nation

Youth Act and InterACT

Our flagship programme for primary schools enables children to understand the issues that face our society. Its activities then help them to develop the capability and confidence to act on what matters to them.

Giving Nation inspires young people in secondary schools to see what they’ve got to offer others and challenges them to become problem-solvers, not problems. And they do…

In the last seven years we have supported 40 groups of young people to develop campaigning skills and work to improve their local communities. From better buses to better race relations, they’ve found truly imaginative ways to put their case across. A number are still going strong, such as the annual rally against gun and knife crime in Tottenham.

More than 6,000 schools (nearly a third of all the primary schools in England) have subscribed to our web-based platform, which offers over 100 lesson plans and interactive tools.

Eighty schools have taken part in our Make a Difference Challenge, taking collective action to help others in their communities and beyond.

We give them training, with free materials aligned to the National Curriculum, and £50 per class to set up a short-term organisation designed to contribute to the common good.

In the last four years the programme has involved over 160,000 students in nearly 500 schools, who raised over £780,000 and volunteered for 940,000 hours, benefitting more than 1,500 charities and causes.

Today, through InterACT, we’re extending this into 12 cities across the UK, bringing new-arrival communities such as asylum seekers together with longer-term residents, creating a united voice for support and change.

Go-Givers and Giving Nation are supported by the Office for Civil Society at the Cabinet Office.

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Growing up caring It’s said that each new generation now absorbs a hundred times more information than their grandparents. We receive increasing levels of stimulus, with decreasing time to make sense of it all.

Such pressure can overload our will to care. We can lose our sense of each other’s needs and circumstances, and in the end lose our sense of what’s at stake when people make decisions that affect everyone.

Citizenship addresses our need to create answers together. Answers that will work for as many people as possible while recognising that no one can be completely satisfied all the

time; our world is too diverse for effortless unity, too troubled for instant peace, too complex for quick solutions, too changeable to foresee every eventuality.

It’s crucial to recognise this. If you understand the essence of the problem, you have some hope of contributing to the answers. And a nation that grows more unequal every day needs people who care and are ready to create answers.

We believe that information should empower people, not overload them. We want them to grow up both knowing and caring.

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Magistrates’ Court and Bar National Mock Trial competitions This year, more than 9,000 students from 600 secondary schools across the UK experienced the courtroom process through these competitions. Interacting with over 1,000 legal personnel, they discovered how justice is administered locally, in 85 Crown, Magistrates’ and High Courts.

Now in their 21st year, these competitions have helped hundreds of thousands to understand the legal framework on which our democratic society is founded – and maybe saved a few from unnecessary court appearances!

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Lawyers in Schools

Our publications

In some of the UK’s more deprived areas, we have been enabling small groups of young people to meet lawyers and understand aspects of the law that are relevant to them.

It’s often an eye-opener for both sides.

Pictured are just three examples of our 50 or so publications. In total, we’ve sold or given away literally millions of copies.

We have 26 partners, both law firms and the law departments of corporations such as JPMorgan and the BBC. This year we will put 400 lawyers in classrooms to work with around 1,000 young people. They will discuss everything from babysitting to gang crime, and will also demystify what it means to talk to a lawyer.

The Young Citizen’s Passport (YCP) is now in its 15th edition. Distributed to over 2 million young people over the years, this practical guide sums up relevant laws and rights, giving the detail and sense of the law. In 2010 Santander helped get 720,000 copies of My Money My Rights, an extract from the YCP, to every mainstream, special and independent school and pupil referral unit in the UK for their year 10 (England and Wales), S4 (Scotland) and year 11 (Northern Ireland) students.

There’s also Making Sense of Citizenship, the government-supported handbook for teachers of citizenship education, and Life and Law in Britain, which helps new arrivals such as asylum seekers to get the information they need.

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Growing up fair Children often shout ‘That’s not fair!’ when they feel badly done by.

A sense of what’s fair (and what isn’t) seems to be inbuilt. It can make us see red, take to the streets, start movements...

Fairness can relate to whether or not people feel things are equal, but it’s also about whether or not the rules have been made clear to everyone.

It feels equally unfair to get into trouble for something you didn’t know was wrong.

In a fair society everyone is aware of the rules, not only to see why they’re there, but also not to fall foul of the law through ignorance. They know how and why the same rules apply to everyone and that justice matters. They also know what powers every citizen is entitled to have – and how that can help to turn around disadvantage.

We want people to grow up knowing about (and believing in) fairness.

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The Young Muslim Leadership Network

Citizenship Challenge in Pupil Referral Units (PRUs)

Building on a number of our previous initiatives to support participation of members of minority communities, this network has helped a new group to develop their capabilities and commitment as social influencers.

PRUs support young people who are excluded from or unable to attend mainstream school, offering short-term alternative schooling.

Over two years we worked with a number of young Muslim leaders to enable them to meet with national and local figures (MPs, councillors, cultural figures) and address issues through making videos or writing reports that sharpened up their thinking. Now 60 of Britain’s finest, with a wide range of heartfelt opinions, have a stronger voice – to everyone’s benefit.

Many PRU students come from families that lack the necessary skills to take advantage of the freedoms and rights that others enjoy. Our Citizenship Challenge materials are particularly relevant here. Designed in partnership with PRU teachers, they have been praised for their ability to get to the heart of the issues that affect such young people, helping them to reconnect with a society they feel has rejected and excluded them.

Citizens’ Day Framework Working with the Department for Communities and Local Government, we have helped to devise a national framework to celebrate the way participation strengthens local communities.

This has opened the doors of councils and community groups and has showcased the many different ways in which people are involved in the everyday workings of their neighbourhoods. It has helped to get more people, and from a wider variety of backgrounds and walks of life, involved in civic affairs.

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Growing up included Many kinds of power can give people an advantage. Being in on the big decisions, having money or friends with influence, better opportunities, better health, or just a bigger vocabulary – most people would want all of these. The only problem is that so many people don’t have them, and many live on the other side of advantage.

It also develops systems that are as inclusive as possible, ones that value everyone’s contribution. It recognises that some people find it difficult to be included, and constantly assesses how to overcome cultural barriers.

A strong democracy protects the right of disadvantaged people to be included, and supports their engagement in the decisions that affect them. That way we all have the best chance to negotiate and manage a fairer world.

We’d like to help make sure that that happens.

No outsiders.

That kind of vigilance helps to make us all more connected, safer and more prosperous.

We’d rather people grew up included.

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Make the Link Climate exChange Working with Plan International, we are connecting schools in Europe and Africa so that students can share their experiences of climate change and develop campaigns with one another. What may seem reasonable levels of consumption in the UK turns out to destroy trees and topsoil in Malawi. By making such connections young people recognise real-life impact.

Together, schools grow in understanding and commitment around climate change, recruiting their friends and school in joint awareness and action.

Act Global

Paying for It

Act Global gets young people engaged as global citizens and supports them in taking action on poverty-related issues. The project has been funded by the Department for International Development and is being delivered jointly with Relief International UK.

Run in partnership with Aviva, Paying for It aims to increase economic awareness among young people aged 14-18. It helps them to understand how the economy functions, including the roles of business and financial services and the rights and responsibilities of consumers, employers and employees.

It helps students to think critically and creatively and provides a student network offering opportunities to develop their own arguments; analysing and evaluating evidence before designing their own action project – something near to home that can change the world a little.

In the current academic year, 1,200 lesson plans have been downloaded, 80 teachers trained nationwide and 2,800 young people involved in our annual Chance to be Chancellor competition, which gives them the opportunity to tell the Government how they think it should spend the public’s money.

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From global to local Being connected is not just about the people we meet, or even the people we share this country with, but all those who produce the goods and services we consume, whose economies are generating the funds for our pensions, and so on.

Modern life needs us to address so many big issues: trust between nations; climate change; ideological wars; human rights; pandemics; regional unions; international development; sunrise economies; the global financial crisis.

The world is indeed a hundred times more complex and interconnected than the one our grandparents knew. And there’s no going back.

To grow up British is to grow up global and yet, our first experience of politics, the law, economics, other cultures, social decisions, choices and dilemmas is local.

Getting involved locally is like a gateway – a route to experience the critical issues first-hand, to discover why they matter and how they connect.

We believe in what we call ‘citizen action’: getting involved not just as volunteers but as people who have real powers that connect to democracy, that can enrich and regulate our local community, our region, our country, our world. This might start at home, but it doesn’t end there.

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‘I was very excited and shaking when they called out my name… For me the young persons award is recognition for how serious we are as young people about living in peace and clear proof that you can take action and make a difference no matter how old you are.’

‘...the shop… didn’t want to exchange my product but I stood there and explained what I learned in my consumer law lesson’ Student Harris Academy, Bermondsey

‘Youth Act has given me confidence and helped me to use my energy and time in a positive way. I love it.’

Francion Participant, age 15

Latyah

With thanks to the following parties who have supported the work described in this publication:

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Addleshaw Goddard LLP Allen & Overy LLP Ashurst Association for Citizenship Teaching Aviva BBC Legal Services Bird&Bird Blackstone Chambers Cabinet Office – Office for Civil Society Calouste Guilbenkian Foundation Centrica Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton CMS Cameron McKenna LLP

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Comic Relief Council of Europe Debevoise & Plimpton LLP Department for International Development Department of Communities and Local Government European Union Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer General Council of the Bar for England and Wales Genworth Financial Her Majesty’s Court Services Hodder Education Group JPMorgan Kennedys Law Society Charity Linklaters Magistrates Association

Mallesons Stephen Jaques Matrix Chambers Ministry of Justice Minter Ellison Montrose Associates Olswang Paul Hamlyn Foundation Plan International Relief International Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council Santander Slaughter and May Standard Chartered Stephenson Harwood Sullivan & Cromwell Wates Foundation White & Case LLP

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As a young lawyer, I became alarmed observing teenagers on the wrong side of the law, getting into ever deeper trouble. Our complex society seemed to have a recipe for social division and democratic decline.

I enlisted the Law Society to fund a novel project to develop teaching materials to address the problem. Out of that sprang the Citizenship Foundation, with our two teacher leaders at the helm.

Over 20 years later, we’ve made good headway. We can reasonably claim to be the leading citizenship specialists in the voluntary sector, having played a vanguard role in developing citizenship education as a national curriculum subject. We have seen what a game-changer that can be for the way society supports young people to become engaged citizens - not passive subjects.

Our advisory council:

Our board of trustees:

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Cherie Booth QC Edward Garnier QC MP Steve Hilton Peter Kellner Lord Puttnam of Queensgate Jon Sopel

Michael Maclay (Chair) Martin Bostock (Deputy Chair) Susan Simmonds (Deputy Chair) Christopher Kinch QC David Bromfield David Kerr David Miles Dr Emma-Jane Watchorn Harinder Mann

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As the examples in this brochure show, there are a plethora of wonderful things happening in schools and beyond. Yet there can be no complacency as our world and society face new and ever-more demanding challenges.

We remain passionate about inspiring young people to develop the knowledge, skills and the will to meet those challenges.

We hope that this publication has shown you why.

Please join us. There’s so much to do.

Andrew Phillips OBE

(Lord Phillips of Sudbury) Founder and President

Laura Wood Nick Johnson Oliver Benson Piya Muqit Rohan Silva Sir Keith Ajegbo

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Supporting our work The Citizenship Foundation depends on individuals, grant-makers and businesses who believe as passionately as we do in supporting young people to become effective citizens.

Charitable donations, grants, partnerships and sponsorship are indispensible to carrying on and extending our mission.

Please contact us at: Citizenship Foundation, 63 Gee Street, London EC1V 3RS Telephone: 020 7566 4145 Email: info@citizenshipfoundation.org.uk Registered Charity number 801360

Our dedicated team works closely with our major supporters.

We are ready to suggest specific projects, programmes or new initiatives upon request. We work closely on partnerships that meet shared objectives.

Your support can make all the difference.

www.citizenshipfoundation.org.uk The publication was kindly funded by

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