Ipswich: A town of social action

Central to the vision of the #iwill Movement is working through a place based approach- a neighbourhood, village, town or city- wherever we call our home. By finding out what young people care about in their communities, and by enabling hyper-local youth social action around these priorities, young people are able to start to create new solutions to the things that matter most.

A focus on Ipswich

To help this work to grow, we are using a simple interactive tool to start to map, share and understand the variety of youth social action in Ipswich. With local organisations signing up to the Power of Youth Charter as a way to publicly demonstrate their shared commitment to this agenda, we are working together to ensure young people are shaping and leading the change in their lives and communities.

More information about our project

We know that youth social action drives new insights- new thoughts and new practices. We know that working across sectors is not always easy. But we also know that everything is interconnected, and interdependent- that inequalities are systemic, multifaceted and the reasons multiple, complex and messy. If we are serious about making sustained change in lives and communities, then we have to get comfortable with this complexity. And we can do this best through a place-based lens. so organisations across the UK in all sectors have a huge role to play in enabling this change.

Working at a place-level, local institutions, grassroots organisations, funders, and service providers have a huge opportunity to really work together: to collaborate across sectors, to relinquish power and control, to take a collective risk together, and to ultimately try something new- to allow young people to shape and lead the local change needed for communities to thrive.

We don’t have all the answers. So to grow and deepen the understanding of how youth social action can shape place-based change, we are increasingly supporting local leaders in a handful of locations across the UK. Our job is to support #iwill ambassadors and to amplify the voices of local young people, spotlighting their work and the impact it is having in communities, and to work with local leaders to explore the impact and unlock the vital evidence of youth social action.