Was your name on one of these?

Here's a new action for you all to chew on - if you accept an invitation to an event, go to it. The people who've organised the event - whether it's a farewell do for someone you hardly knew at work or a fancy bash hosted by an MP at the House of Commons (see previous blog ) - will have taken your attendance into consideration when planning for the event. This means that at the very least there will be 3 or 4 vol au vents with your name on them and if you don't show up, then one of two equally abhorrent things will happen to them. 1. They will end up in the bin which is a criminal waste or 2. if I'm at the event I will eat them. Today for example, at the aforementioned DCSF Young Activist celebration, there were around 30 "no shows", which meant platters of mouth watering House of Commons finger food ended up in the House of Commons rubbish. Obviously I did my bit but even for me there is a limit.

The situation was all the more poignant given the nature of the event - to celebrate the achivements of young activists campaigning on the subject of sustainability.

Hmmmm.

MP pledges to unplug mobile phone

Off to the House of Commons today for a celebration of the DCSF Sustainable Schools Unit's Young Activists Programme. We're creating a fabulous set of on-line campaigning resources for young activists as part of the Programme (how to run a fantastic campaign, how to make a great presentation, a brilliant film, a fabulous poster etc) which will enable young people to persuade loads of people to lots of good things. The new resources will be available from this September on our soon to be re-launched website. (Watch this space.) We took along Lucie and Rachelle - graduates of year one of our Young Speakers Programme - and let them loose on the unsuspecting crowd with a stack of WAWWD "action stickers"* . Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools, Diana Johnson committed to "unplug her mobile phone charger" from this day forward and was duly given an "action sticker". She won't be forgetting to that in a hurry. Nice one girls. (Rachelle is seen here with proof of Diana Johnson's commitment.)

*Definition of "action sticker": a sticker with an action on it. You say you'll do an action and we stick a sticker on you to remind you. We wear a matching sticker on out t-shirt as proof of your commitment.

Out of the office, into the countryside, training this year's Young Speakers

Over the last 2 weeks, We Are What We Do has been travelling from the village of Eskdale in the Lake District to the Chew Valley in Somerset to take 200 16-18 year olds out of their schools and colleges and get them all geared up to be We Are What We Do Young Speakers. It’s been an inspiring, exciting and exhausting few weeks!

Before coming, everyone baked something for a friend (Action 30). We had bright blue cupcakes, brownies, banana bread, baklava, carrot cake, fairy cakes that spelt We Are What We Do, homemade bread and butter pudding … and more much to keep us going!

On the first day, each school group planned a campaign to run in their schools and made a 30 sec ad for it … ranging from ‘Do something for nothing’, ‘Learn to be friendly in another language’, ‘Recycle’, ‘Don’t litter’. One of our favourites short films, made by the Young Speakers of Valentine's High School in East London is around ‘Get fitter feel better’ - which you can see here:



On the second day, we focused on speaking and everyone got their We Are What We Do presentations up to scratch – which were simply brilliant and ready to be unleashed in the wider world!


All in all, another very successful year of Young Speakers training and looking forward to the coming year …