Our charter is the set of guiding principles which outline our commitment to how we embed meaningful and inclusive youth voice in our work.
Find out below about our journey to creating our Youth Charter, along with resources packed with top tips and case studies to help your organisation kickstart your youth voice journey.
As a charity which supports young people, it is important that our work is shaped by young people’s needs and priorities. This keeps us authentic to our core belief to empower young people, helping us to be more effective and relevant in our work. Having a youth voice charter is integral for:
The youth voice charter lays out The Diana Award’s commitment to ensuring that youth voice is at the centre of our work and also provides a set of principles we can hold ourselves accountable to.
All The Diana Award, all programmes will use the same guiding principles to ensure we have a consistent and inclusive youth participation framework. As our work continues to evolve, this charter will ensure our work is always underpinned by youth voice.
The charter will serve as a tool to help us implement our youth voice principles, aiding us to track our successes, challenges and learnings when it comes to embedding youth voice and participation.
Over the past three years, we have worked in partnership with a group of Young Advisors to help us improve our youth voice and participation practices.
Following identification of areas of improvement during an initial research phase, Young Advisors collaborated with staff on projects to help put these improvements into practice. Through these collaborations, we were able to:
Following this learning through implementation, we held workshops with Young Advisors and staff to form and test our charter. With input from all parties, our youth voice charter is a document which itself is youth-led while being manageable and achievable. The charter remains a live document due to the need to evolve as we continue to learn and identify best practice in keeping a youth led approach in our work.
Read our Youth Charter resources by clicking on the drop down, each with top tips for how to implement this principle and case studies for how we worked with Young Advisors to improve this in our organisation!
Put the safety and comfort of young people first
Resources coming soon
Ensure work is informed by and created with young people
Resources coming soon
Fair distribution and pathway of opportunities for young people
Resources coming soon
Ensure youth participation is mutually beneficial for young people and the organisation
Resources coming soon
Share power and decision making with young people
Name: Beatrix
Bio: Hi, my name is Beatrix. I am incredibly excited about starting the role of a Young Advisor. I am a young forest school leader and have worked with youth organisations local to me.
Name: Arthur
Bio: My name is Arthur, I’m 16 and from Cardiff. I have been a Young Advisor since the start of the project, and it has been a fantastic opportunity to champion youth voice within the Diana Award and beyond.
Name: Sanah
Bio: I am excited to be part of The Diana Award’s Young Advisors project, having worked extensively in the youth, voluntary, and social action sectors over a number of years.
Name: Elsa
Bio: The Diana Award were the first organisation to help me believe that my voice mattered and I was capable of helping to create change, so it is a huge honour to be able to continue working with them as a young advisor for year 3 of the youth voice project.
Name: Gracie
Bio: My name is Gracie and I am a 17 year old, aspiring medical student, studying A-Levels in Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics and English Literature.
Name: Harman
Bio: The Young Advisors project is special to me as I could continue working with a charity that I’ve been involved with since I was 12 and reflect on my experiences in youth voice and social action.
Name: Theo
Bio: I am very proud to have been a young advisor for the past 2 years and cannot wait to see what the next year of the project holds!
Name: Jade
Bio: I am passionate about youth voice because I truly believe that we cannot do a best for young people, if we do not talk to young people.
Name: Aaliyah
Bio: Hi, I'm Aaliyah, hailing from Birmingham, and I'm passionate about making a real difference for young people.
Name: Cody
Bio: Hi! My name is Cody Jackson - I am 15 years old and live in a wonderful city called Milton Keynes
Name: Mitch
Bio: I am overjoyed to be joining this project because I am a great believer in the power of young people to change the world.
We couldn’t do what we do without the support of our sponsors.
Our Young Advisor, Aaliyah, writes about the importance of sharing decision making and power with young people and the benefits this can have for an organisation. Aaliyah also reflects on moments she has felt truly included in decision making and the impact that this has had on her own development.
The Diana Award recently launched our first Youth Insights Report, focused on Youth Voice in Politics. To ensure youth involvement from the ground up, we involved Peer Researchers throughout the process to help connect us with the stories and experiences of young people. Follow Peer Researchers Gracie and Arthur, as they journey towards improving levels of youth engagement in politics and discuss the power of young people as facilitators, analysts, and champions for change.
The second Young Advisor residential was a fantastic chance to evaluate recommendations to increase the levels of youth voice and participation, build activities that are meaningful to young people and celebrate the way in which young people are at the heart of The Diana Award.
