Young Leaders Award
Archbishop of York Young Leaders Award is a unique active citizenship programme which empowers young people to make a difference in their local community whilst growing in key leadership skills at the same time.
The Archbishop of York Youth Trust exists to empower young people to ‘be the change the change you want to see’ in their schools, communities and the world!
Children in year 4 take part in this award on an annual basis and year 2 will also be completing the Key Stage 1 version of the award in 2022.
The Award is a combination of classroom based learning and learning outside of the classroom, as well as community action.
The key stage 2 award is based over 6 units.
- Leadership Skills - how we use them to change the world
- Inspirational Leaders – people who have changed the world for the better
- The Local Community – identifying important areas and places of need
- The National Community – researching national charities bringing about change
- The Global Community – exploring issues of justice across the world
- Community Action – your project
Throughout the Award, pupils will be inspired to take action and start serving others in order to make a difference in their communities and Archie will be their example to follow. The practical community action takes place in the following three ways:
1. School Based Challenges:
During the Award, Archie will appear in each lesson, via an on screen text message to issue the class with a challenge which they will need to develop various leadership skills in order to achieve. We will provide you with plenty of Archie school based challenges to choose from but you are free to also add and develop your own according to what is happening in your school.
2. Individual Challenges:
Each pupil will complete Archie’s challenge grid. This involves completing five personal challenges to help them think about their responsibility to serve and help others.
3. Community Action Project:
To complete the Award the children will organise a local community action project based on a need they have identified in their locality. The children come up with the ideas themselves, considering how they can serve their local area and ‘be the change they want to see’.
The Key Stage 1 Award is based over 4 units: Kindness, Perseverance, Teamwork and Action. In each unit, the children will have story-based, practical and discussion-focused opportunities to learn each specific skill and share examples in a range of contexts. They will hear stories from the Bible and stories about famous historical figures that link with the skill in focus. At the end of each unit, children will be set a challenge to put that skill into action. The final 'Action' unit will allow the children to plan and implement their own community project, considering how they want to put their new learning into action. They learn through stories and characters in a similar way to Key Stage 2, but Key Stage 1's character is called Gracie instead of Archie!