At the start of February, Woodcraft Folk hosted a training weekend at the charity’s Cudham Environmental Activity Centre. The weekend was attended by Woodcraft Folk members from across the country who will be delivering workshops later this year as Peer Facilitators as part of the Peer Action Collective.
The Peer Action Collective (PAC) seeks to support 10 to 25-year-olds to contribute to community activities designed to help young people live a life free from violence. The innovative collective is funded by the Youth Endowment Fund, the #iwill Fund (a joint investment between The National Lottery Community Fund and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport) and the Co-op Group. You can find out more about the Peer Action Collective (PAC) here.
During the weekend participants took part in a range of workshops including deepening understanding around cooperative values, an introduction to safeguarding, developing activity ideas and tips for facilitators for delivering sessions. The group were also visited by Ellie from the Youth Endowment Fund to find out more about the Peer Action Collective and to hear about case studies from previous PAC projects.
The group also took part in cooperative activities and discussed different ways to explore cooperative values. One of the activities was for the group to work in small teams to build a shelter for an egg. The eggs were then dropped from a height in their shelters and 2 out of 3 of the eggs survived!
“The egg activity helped us to see which roles we took on within our small group and this helped us cooperate together” – Peer Facilitator.
Whilst at Cudham the group developed, designed and adapted activities which they then practised delivering to each other. This was beneficial for boosting the delivery confidence of the Peer Facilitators.
Later this year, Peer facilitators will deliver workshops to young people across the UK emphasising and raising awareness about the importance of cooperation and using cooperative values during social action projects. Between them, the group will be delivering 14 sessions over 2024-2025 to groups of young people (changemakers) across England and Wales who are looking to make change in their local areas including eradicating youth violence, supporting School refusers, mental health and stopping discrimination.
If you would like to find out more about the Peer Action Collective project head to the project page or get in touch with lauren.karstadt@woodcraft.org.uk