On Friday 11 November, Tottenham-based, social enterprise, involver, will be taken over by pupils from Welbourne Primary School. Four pupils will be made Directors of involver for a day, running the organisation and deciding on its future strategy.
This is being organised as part of a national day of action by young people, co-ordinated by the Children’s Commissioner for England, under the banner of Takeover Day 2011.
The enterprising young pupils will be writing new resources for other schools to use, blogging about their day, calling up Haringey schools to talk about working together and creating a strategy for involver to follow for the rest of the year.
Martell, 11, who will be one of the Directors for a day, is excited by the opportunity, “I think it’s good that we’re going to get to run involver, because their business is about schools and kids, so we’ll have good ideas about what they could do.”
Asher Jacobsberg, one of involver’s founders and it’s (current) Director, said, “We help schools to get young people learning about democracy by playing an active part in running their schools, so this is a great opportunity for us to practice what we preach. I think we’ll finish this day with better, more relevant ideas for how we can help primary-age students than we could come up with in a year on our own.”
Maggie Atkinson, Children’s Commissioner for England said: “I am very excited about our fifth Children’s Commissioner’s Takeover Day this year, and I look forward to hearing about what people are doing. The day provides such a brilliant opportunity for children and young people to make a difference to their schools and communities, have their voices heard and challenge the stereotypes about them that we hear too often. Children and young people have so much to offer. They bring ideas, imagination and energy which can really make a difference to organisations.”
The Welbourne pupils will start by learning about what a social enterprise is and then move on to the real work: creating a strategy for involver’s work with primary-age pupils. Once they’ve thrashed that out they will be starting to put it in to action.
Pupils might end up outlining books to help school councils involve the whole school, organising events for Haringey schools, or writing sessions for training other young people. Involver are clear that what the Welbourne pupils do really is up to them, they are the bosses.
Involver have committed to carry through on the strategies decided by the young people and credit them as colleagues on any materials arising from their work.
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