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Posted on February 8th 2021
Tope, Year 12, Reports on Her Work Experience with Charity IARS
Tope, Year 12, kept this journal to document her work experience week with IARS, a youth-led NGO which aims to give everyone a chance to forge a safer, fairer and more inclusive society.
Monday 25th January
On Monday, we had an introduction session to the organisation IARS, a UK-based charity which speaks out on behalf of the youth and younger generation. Their main focus is on human rights, Gender-Based Violence (GBV), mental health and the empowerment of young people.
Secondly, we were asked to explore the organisation’s website. This gave us a virtual tour of their workplace. Later that day, we had an interactive training session where we discussed the risks and opportunities online. Here we spoke about customer profiling. This is a way of creating portraits of your customers that are based on factual information.
The training on Identity and Healthy Relationships really stood out to me.
I also learnt about our digital footprint. This is the data that we leave along whilst using the internet that forms our identity.
The training on Identity and Healthy Relationships really stood out to me as it taught me the value and purpose of identity, your differences whether it is your races, background, sex, gender etc. We discussed what makes a healthy relationship and used objects such as a phone, present, safety pin, money and certificate to symbolise how certain things have an effect on a relationship.
Tuesday 26th January
On Tuesday, we began to plan our projects for ‘The Challenge’. We were given ten hours to complete the task. We had to design a project based on a topic that we had learnt. It was important that we included our targets and challenges. We also had to make sure that our mocks targets were SMART. This means that the targets had to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound. We were shown some examples of topics that we should talk about in project, also the design format that we should present it in.
Wednesday 27th January
We were given the whole day to plan our challenge. I chose to do my project based on Identity and Healthy Relationships as the training session for this topic really stood out to me.
The design format that I chose to present mine in was a digital footprint. I thought that it would be suitable for what wanted to portray. My audience type was towards the younger generation and youth as I am still young and learning myself. What I want to achieve by the end of my project:
- Present on the topic of Identity and Healthy Relationship
- Improve my ability to plan a project within a fixed time period
- Help others build their self-esteem/confidence
- Discover who I am as a person
- Help others discover their purpose
We were asked to make personal targets. Mine were:
- Trace my roots
- Find an inspirational family member that has a story to tell
- Research the history of my ethnicity/race
- Give an example of a celebrity and research their upbringing.
- Develop a factsheet
From the notes I made, I gradually started to plan out the structure of my poster. For example, how many paragraphs I would need, who I am directly trying to talk to etc. I also had to do some research based on the topic I chose.
I wanted to improve my ability to plan a project within a fixed time period.
Thursday 29th January
On Thursday, we were invited to conference meeting which was held through Zoom and Facebook live. The meeting was based on Gender-Based Violence (GBV)and speaking out for young people. It was an international conference so we got the chance to hear about the situations that young people are going through around the world.
It was educating and interesting as I really made you think and sympathise for the many people out there that are through real life problems. Later that day we continued to work on our projects.
It really gave me the chance to express and show what I can do.
Friday 30th January
This day was our last day of the work experience. We had to all present our end projects. Some of us worked in groups but I worked independently. Overall, this was one of my favourite parts of the work experience as it really gave me the chance to express and show what I can do.
The work experience was very helpful and eye-opening. It really made me aware of the situations that many young and older people go through. I gained an increased understanding of different perspectives and attitudes, and the ability to identify online and offline risks. Lastly it gave me the feeling of having control over my own life.
Below is my finished project….
