Thinking about this weekends upcoming event UKYouthOnline has got me thinking again about OnTheUp. OnTheUp was the idea that came out of ‘Personal Development Reports‘ that I originally submitted to the Social Innovation Camp earlier in the year. I haven’t yet managed to dedicate the time to developing the idea further as I’d have hoped, and in retrospect I think that perhaps the Social Innovation Camp experience slightly hampered development in that what started out as an attempt to develop a tool to support informal learning became more focussed on being able to somehow develop this into ‘the next big website’.

I do think online technology could be a brilliant tool for ’solving’ this problem – but it needs a bit more thought than just banging out a site. So I’ve gone right back to the start to have a think about what that problem actually is.

I first became aware that there was a ‘problem’ quite early on in the development of the Young Movers programme. Young Movers was initially based on a loose remit of creating a programme for young people in citizenship. My take on this was to try and develop a programme that would help young people to become ‘good citizens’ – this meaning they would be the sort of people any community would be proud of and who would have the skills to make positive contributions to those communities. Hence my first interest in the ‘wooly world’ of ’soft skills’!

In the early courses we ran we used various outdoor (adventurous) activities. Afterall everyone knows outdoor activities are the best way to develop confidence, leadership etc. Now I love abseiling – early in my working life I spent a couple of summers happily throwing all sorts of people down ropes, and it was very satisfying, reassuring people who were very scared, to actually get to the bottom. In those early Young Movers courses though I felt differently – I really struggled with how young people would actually be able to transfer what they got from the experience of completing an abseil, into the confidence they would need in real life situations back home. They undeniably got a high from completing an abseil, but I just couldn’t make the link between them doing that, to being able to ‘bottle up’ what they got from it and making it into a genuinely useful experience.

My solution at the time was to stop using these activities and instead to develop alternative activities that were still challenging and enjoyable, but that had more direct relevance to being able to organise projects/activities.

The problem came again though years later. This time it was from my first hand observations of being able to see young people develop in all sorts of ways, and from all sorts of testaments from young people themselves and those working with them somehow attributing their personal successes back to their experiences with us. All very nice to hear – but how do you prove what those benefits actually were?

My experience at Social Innovation Camp was fascinating, largely because probably above any other project my idea was the “what the f**k is that about?!” project. Basically people who work in informal education would see this as a familiar problem (and frustration), but to anyone else they just didn’t get it until having had a very lengthy explanation (much like this post is becoming!).

Anyway to help package my thoughts I’ve created a slideshow. I have started to have some good thoughts about how to approach this now (but more on that in the future!), but maybe you have ideas too – if so please do share them.

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