A month in the life of a Director of Youth Programmes is probably not what you would expect it to be, especially when that Director of Youth Programmes works for Another Way! It’s safe to say that every week of my working life is different – and this month has been a great example.
At times you’ll find me at my desk working on policies, strategies and lots of very important behind-the-scenes stuff, but I also spend a huge chunk of my time travelling up and down the country to deliver our gamified climate education to thousands of young people.
You may have read about our Escape Room adventures at the Big Bang Fair this year, where 1600 students visited our pop-up escape room to “Escape the Climate Crisis”. And whilst it’s so much fun facilitating young people learning about the importance of worms in our soil, how we need to move beyond simply recycling plastic to protect our oceans, and what green careers they can pursue, there’s a lot more that goes into bringing this amazing experience to festivals and events around the UK…
What you didn’t see was myself and our wonderful Youth Engagement Lead, Elli, navigating the storage unit where the escape room is stored, moving it round all the awkward corners, discovering muscles we didn’t know we had in a 4-hour escape room build session, and even giving some of the escape room elements a fresh lick of paint!
This life is filled with so many things you wouldn’t expect to find in our job descriptions!
Later on in the month, I headed over to Blackburn Rovers Football Stadium (1 of 3 football stadiums I’ve worked at during my career in environmental education) for the Sustainability Learning Conference, bring one of our Green Careers Workshops and our “Biodiversity Jenga” game to over 100 young people.
Finally, I kicked off July by travelling down to Northampton to take part in Malcolm Arnold Academy’s Green Day, delivering our “Flipping the Climate Script” workshops to 240 of their students. This workshop is my favourite to deliver, because I can get into really interesting discussions with young people about the nuances of taking climate action – what’s possible, what has the most impact and (most importantly) where they hold the power.
Written by Dr Gemma Connell.
