SP Community Champions Programme
Our award-winning community champions pathway provides local young people with volunteering, training and employment opportunities.
Volunteering and employment programme
Our community champions programmes provides volunteering, training and paid work for local young people who participate in our sessions. Participants who demonstrate passion, leadership, reliability and a willingness to learn, are selected by staff to engage in the programme. They complete 4-6 weeks of volunteering with us and if all goes well, paid work (at the London Living Wage) as a community engagement officer is offered.
Typical responsibilities include delivering sports and education sessions, monitoring and evaluating our programmes and content creation (social media, videos, flyers). More than 65 young people have participated in this programme. ‘Graduates’ of the programme are now pursuing various roles, including leadership/director positions at Salaam Peace, teaching, law enforcement and work in the public and private sectors.
Youth advisory board
Our community champions youth board consist of 8 participants aged 13-18. They meet every 6-weeks to discuss local issues, co-create our term-time and holiday activity programme, plan events and share their insights with external partners. Alongside this, they support our management team with administrative duties including payroll, invoicing and M&E. Recently, our community champions attended a corporate insight day at Sysdoc consultancy, planned our holiday activity programmes and met with the Waltham Forest business support team to advocate for local business investment in Salaam Peace.
I am thankful to what Salaam Peace has done for me during most of my years at college and university, as they offered me training and responsibilities to rapidly develop my key skills, qualities and experience which now made me stand out more compared to others in my field of work and successfully plan and deliver sessions for primary school ages to enjoy.