Youth Vision is a charity based on the outskirts of Edinburgh which has been supporting young people on the edge of exclusion from school for over 10 years, through a range of outdoor projects. Youth Vision was established by Sara Beauregard, who was awarded an MBE earlier this year for her outstanding work with young people in South Edinburgh.
From our steading on the edge of the Pentland Hills, we are able to engage young people in outdoors activities where they feel it easier to engage and are more willing to talk and be supported by our trained staff and volunteers.
We run a range of integrated nature based informal education programmes that enable children and young people to experience nature and personal growth in a supported and safe environment. Our work aims to increase the emotional, physical and social wellbeing of the young people who take part in our innovative programmes.
Over recent years there has been an increased need for greater levels of support and more of the young people we work with are in care of the council or from increasingly disrupted family life.
We provide a range of outdoor activities throughout the year aimed for children and young people aged 9 and upwards. The main programmes we run for our steading are:
This is our early intervention project for children aged 9 – 13 years, offering nature-based informal education to primary school aged children who are making the transition to secondary school. Supporting play and learning through nature-based activities. We recognize that children who come from built-up inner-city areas have a lack of green spaces available in their local areas, which can have a detrimental impact on their general wellbeing. Forest Skills gives children the freedom to learn from the natural world around them.
Open to all young people aged 13-24. This group runs every Saturday and carries out the important tasks involved in running and maintaining a remote farm steading. The group is run by Young leaders and the young people, they decide together and facilitate the various projects. Examples include; green woodworking skills, dry stone walling and navigation.
This is an intensive year-long support and learning programme that is suitable for young people aged 14 – 16 who are not attaining or attending school. The young people that are referred to us are from areas of urban deprivation and are often excluded and struggling to cope with a range of inter-related problems that affect their life-chances. The project runs throughout the school year and we work with a maximum of 8 young people each day to ensure we are providing a safe and nurturing learning environment.
Providing further support for young people aged 16-24 who are struggling to find employment, education or training opportunities. The young people continue to develop essential life skills, gain various qualifications in rural and traditional skills & hill walking and navigation. They receive 1:1 support in job applications, training opportunities, goal setting, CV writing and interview skills.
This new activity provides a chance for people of all ages 16 plus, to volunteer at Youth Vision. Running on Fridays it presents an opportunity to build on, share and learn new skills, meet new friends, contribute to the community and enjoy being outdoors and gain work experience. Also providing work experience for JET from local 4th yr. High Schools learning about horticulture, planting and harvesting various crops. A new addition here is Plan Bee, talked about in our short video, which brings bees to our garden and wildflower area to occupy the bee hives built by the young people earlier this year.
This is run by a range of volunteers who are professionals, including builders, architects and archaeologists, who offer expert skills and knowledge as part of our flexible work experience service. Young people take part in conservation work to rebuild the steading and learn skills such as lime mortaring, dry-stane dyking. It takes young people another step closer to achieving their work related goals and personal outcomes. Run throughout all programs.
Volunteer Service
Youth Vision could not run without its team of 25 to 30 volunteers, so along with young people they are at the heart of the project and play a key role in supporting the valuable work that we do with children and young people. It is our aim to provide a meaningful and useful experience that supports the aspirations and wishes of volunteers. This is complimented by our Young Leaders programme which provides training and support to many aspiring volunteers and activity leaders.
To enable us to do more to help young people, we want to raise this money to work with the University of Edinburgh to install a wind turbine by our steading and to install solar panels on the roof. As anyone who spends time in the Pentland Hills will know, there is always plenty of wind and it is lovely on a sunny day, so we want to harness this energy.
With these additions, we will be able to provide lighting to the steading, making it available more of the time since the short winter days limit the use we can get out of the building at this time of year. We will also be able to use the power to heat the water from our bore hole we established earlier this year: this will provide hot water for washing and dishes as well as to enable washing at our camping field. Our camping field provides a great opportunity for local youth groups or Duke of Edinburgh’s Award groups to camp on the edge of the hills. This will support greater use of our steadying as an outdoor education facility more widely used by the community.
Our children and young people are at the heart of what we do and the improvements we want to make to the steading area. They have built numerous facilities over the last few years including a pizza oven, composting toilet cabin and a Harhut. They have also supported development of our garden including fruit and vegetable areas and built bee hives, ready to introduce some bees to the area (and hopefully make some honey!).
For many young people, the success they receive with us may be the only recognition they have received - this may be something small such as a Safe Axe Handling Certificate, or somehtin huge such as the John Muir Award, but each is a huge step in the growth and development of our young people.
We are eager to continue to grow and enable more young people to be supported by a growing range of activities that we provide. To support this, the committee is developing a five year business plan which will help us in expanding our current services to offer more counselling. This is critical to the young people and their families in order to provide them with the best opportunities and support to help them engage with education and grow as individuals.
We would love you to be a part of our journey to help more young people in the South West of Edinburgh to grow and be a successful part of society.