Suffrage Youth Project Session 8
This week Members of the History Society joined us to lead the session with the young people continue with the mosaic. Emily from the History Society has written this week's update. In preparation for this week’s session, I read around the topic to understand the history of the suffrage movement better. Though I have studied it before, it was quite a while ago and so I wanted to be able to help the youth group come up with ideas for what they wanted to see on their mosaic. In doing this, I learnt significantly more about prominent suffrage movements, not just here but across the world. I also learnt the extent to which people were willing to go to win their right to vote. Both of these highlight the significance of the opportunity we now have to have our say (a point that the Suffrage Centenary Project really tries to get across). Throughout the session, the young people continued to build the central piece of the mosaic and come up with further ideas to include around the main piece. The mosaic artist was always on hand to help and showed both the volunteers and the young people how to create a perfect mosaic. I was even taught how to break the glass tiles to fit into smaller spaces, something I had never done before! Although we did also have a game prepared for the group, they were so focused on adding tiles to their section and expanding upon what had been achieved last week that we ran out of time! By the end of the session, the mosaic was looking significantly more complete thanks to all of the youth group’s hard work, so I cannot wait to see what it looks like when it is finished! Overall, it was a relaxed and sociable evening, allowing us volunteers to get to know the young people better! They were very talkative and we spent the evening chatting and laughing at all of their jokes. I would certainly recommend taking part in the project as it is the perfect opportunity to get involved with the young people of the community and to engage with such an important historical topic which still holds great significance today, all in a really fun way! Emily Briffett - History Society Suffrage youth project session 7
"I always feel the movement is a sort of mosaic. Each of us puts in one little stone, and then you get a great mosaic at the end." - Alice Paul. Over the previous sessions, the young people have been learning about the Suffrage movement, politics and leadership to inspire their design, along with some input from our artist, to create a mosaic to celebrate a hundred years since the movement. Every young person that has participated on the project will help design and create the mosaic based on what they have learned. Just like the quote from Alice Paul, each session and each young person's perspective is another stone which adds to the mosaic. Last Tuesday, our mosaic artist brought along an outline ready to fill based on her previous discussions with the youth group. The mosaic features a suffragette march in the centre, surrounded by smaller panels for the young people to add their own designs. During the session, the young people searched for images of the movement to include in the mosaic. Their designs included iconic pieces of the suffrage story, such burning politicians houses, exploding post boxes, the 'Cat and Mouse', violet flowers and a suffragette badge - These were all thought up and drawn by the young people! Our volunteers and young people were all given instructions on how to put together the mosaic and started to fill in the intricate central piece and began on the outline. There was loads left to do after the session ended but it's great to see the mosaic taking form! Erin Trenchard - Team member Suffrage youth project - Session 6
Last week, the young people watched a movie on the suffrage movement. The movie provoked a lot of thought and emotions amongst both the young people and the volunteers. The session inspired a blog post by Humza - a frequent volunteer on the project. I began volunteering in the summer of 2014 with a NGO focused towards child workers and victims of acid attacks. Since, then I have become more socially aware of the issues our society which its members face on a daily basis. After my first volunteering experience, I realised that I enjoyed giving back to society and helping others in any way possible, big or small. Thus, when I joined university and saw that its volunteering team was large, active and strives to help help many different social areas and groups, I knew that I had to participate and join the team. As a Team Member, I am glad to help out in many different student-led projects which spread over multiple areas and focus groups. When I heard of the Suffrage Volunteering Project, I knew that I had to volunteer for that, not only because the history of females in politics is something I study and have an interest in, but also because I saw how it was beneficial to educate our youth and make them more socially and politically aware of this significant movement from 100 years ago. The aims of this project and its leaders are very inspiring and admirable as they affect the youth who will one day grow up and change the world. I have attended a few sessions of this project where the schoolchildren invited were engaged in an interesting and fun manner to learn about the Suffragette Movement. The activities included painting Suffragette sashes, playing games, all while they were being taught who and what the Suffragette Movement was. One session I also particularly enjoyed and was educated by, was when we showed a film regarding the Movement and how these women fought and protested to get the rights that they were unfairly deprived off. The way this project is being lead and the activities it carries out and the rate of involvement with the schoolchildren is very impressive and educational. Humza - Volunteer One of our volunteers reflects on why she chose to volunteer on the suffrage youth project:
I initially heard about the Suffrage Youth Project through my association with the Royal Holloway Volunteering department. I started this academic year with the commitment to get more involved with activities alongside my degree, in order to gain the most from the university experience in my final year. I chose the Suffrage Youth Project because I found the idea of showing our community’s young people the importance of their voice within our community, extremely appealing. However, having never worked with young people in such a direct way I was initially hesitant that I would struggle to engage them in the activities, but I now know I shouldn’t have been. Since joining this project, I have not only learnt a lot about the way in which youth services massively benefit our community, and the way in which the youth workers are able to engage each and every young person, regardless of their diverse and varying needs, but I’ve also had a lot of fun! I’ve loved having the opportunity to engage with not only an extremely diverse group of young people, and watch them become more confident throughout the weeks as they get to know us, but also to engage with my fellow volunteers! Volunteering as part of the Suffrage Youth Project is definitely something I would recommend to anyone looking to getting involved in university life and make a difference. Ella Silvester - Volunteer |
AuthorThe authors of this blog are student Volunteers at Royal Holloway University. Archives
March 2018
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