Key words: young people, mental health, wellbeing, resilience, leadership
Meddwl Ymlaen (Mind Our Future) North East Wales is a co-production project developing mental health resilience with and for young people, led by The Venture.
Meddwl Ymlaen (Mind Our Future) North East Wales is a co-production project developing mental health resilience with and for young people, led by The Venture. Emerging in 2022 from a partnership of 14 organisations across North East Wales, the project was built on a simple but radical premise: young people should not just be consulted, they should be in the driving seat.
At the heart of the project is the YLAB, the Young Leaders Advisory Board, an open group of young people who operate as equal stakeholders alongside the project team, with joint sign-off on decisions. Young people shaped the original funding application, sit on staff recruitment panels, and lead their own initiatives, including WellFest, a wellbeing festival now in its second year. The decision to keep YLAB membership voluntary was the young people’s own, reflecting a commitment to involvement driven by passion rather than incentive.
The project draws on Transactional Analysis to create communication that is genuinely equal, neither authoritarian nor unstructured, and invests heavily in skilled youth work and inclusive practice. Starting from young people’s ideas rather than the project’s strategic goals, and supported by a flexible funder in the NLCF, the team looks for reasons why things can work rather than reasons why they can’t.
The YLAB is now beginning to look beyond its own community, engaging with policy makers at a national Wales level on issues like vaping, energy drinks, and drug use. Young people are moving from participants to advocates, and the project’s ambition is to amplify their voices through storytelling and case studies, building the profile and evidence for longer-term influence.
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