The Scottish Government

YMCA Scotland

The Executive offered YMCA Scotland £6,555 in 2004-05, £5,689 in 2005-06 and £5,777 in 2006-07 to include sustainable development and environmental issues in residential courses at Wiston Lodge near Biggar for socially excluded young people - with local community follow-up visits.

YMCA found that many young people from disadvantaged areas such as inner-city Glasgow struggled with so many other difficulties in life that they did not perceive the environment to be of either priority or interest. YMCA has tried to change this. The Asian Tsunami disaster triggered interest, providing opportunity to focus on understanding the natural world, our own environment and personal responsibility. Consultation highlighted the need to engage in new and different ways with young people - such as a carbon footprint project.

YMCA developed a number of strategies at Wiston with an approach using the lifestyle of staff and others at the centre as an example of sustainable development, with an induction to Wiston introducing the environment there and the culture of energy conservation etc; consideration of the food at Wiston - wherever possible locally produced, reducing transportation needs; and learning of the need to manage our footprint on the environment, removing rubbish and using renewable energy sources.

YMCA recognised that those attending preferred to be able to recognise something concrete after a programme session that could be practically applied at home in their own community or something that they could physically make on site and either take home or site at Wiston, e.g. bat boxes.

Using innovative techniques and their established youth work skills YMCA challenged young people about their lifestyles and practice. As well as almost 100 young people in 2005-06 and 150 in 2006-07 taking part in targeted residential courses as part of the sustainable action programme, thousands of young people experienced the subject of sustainable action at some level.

A large group of young adults with mental health problems came to Wiston through the Scottish Association of Mental Health for a biodiversity programme including refurbishment of ponds and learning about plant, insect and bird life cycles. This led to 20 accredited John Muir awards. A group of socially excluded young people from Rutherglen stayed for five days, achieving twelve accredited John Muir awards with effort in follow-up activity to lead to final presentations.

SHIFT, an inner-city Glasgow group of young adults (16-25) worked over two days clearing gullies, streams and forest trails with associated learning about sustainable development and lifestyles. Scouts aged 12-18 years worked through environmental taster sessions. A large group of young asylum seekers came to Wiston on a biodiversity programme for three days focussed around a tree-planting project.

Some groups planned visits focussing on specific subjects. One homeless group introduced discussions about global warming, costs and economics of energy and food production, formulating a plan for design of a garden at their hostel where they could tend and grow fresh vegetables. A group of school refusers from Perthshire planned, designed and carried out a full environmental project at Wiston Lodge over three days.

Glenrothes YMCA undertook a challenging project creating a dam and re-routing part of a burn in the nature trail into the pond, with the dam packed with barley straw in order to clean the water flowing into the pond. The group had ownership of this project - three of them who were keen fishermen noticed a decline in fish stocks and were eager to explore the reasons for this. This led to discussions about the disposal of sewage and agricultural use of chemicals.

After a first visit Perth YMCA returned with a new group of young people, and after experience at Wiston Lodge undertook a project planting tree seedlings and clearing non-indigenous trees in Perthshire. A high level of returning groups emphasised the success of the new learning created by the programme.

A series of groups from Cyrenians and West Lothian Youth Action Project created the space for a teepee, built the structure itself and camped out in it over the summer. These were young people with direct experience of homelessness so the project raised a series of issues concerning homelessness as well as environmental awareness.

Besides the intrinsic achievement in these courses, participants gained useful experience to help them in a work situation, for example: design and planning of the projects, health and safety analyses, team work, designing projects within clearly defined time frames, imaginative transfer of learning into practical action at home, learning about a wide range of environmental issues including recycling, energy conservation, food miles.

YMCA developed community follow-up visits more fully after the first year, with visits to several groups relating the learning to practical work within the communities where the young people lived.

In its third year the programme was able to raise issues relating to sustainable development in the context of the threat of climate change reaching the public agenda. Despite the increase in public concern, YMCA found the need to start from a zero base of knowledge with many young people. However, when introduced to concerns about environmental issues and sustainable development, young people were consistently willing to listen and to engage and to take ideas for action back to their home base.

The most encouraging thing for staff was to experience those young people least likely to engage with environmental issues signing up for these programmes and enjoying a whole new area of learning at Wiston. This included much learning for YMCA as an organisation. The programme achieved the numbers of participants and the knowledge and learning YMCA set out to achieve.

Overall, the project generated an interest in the young people, very often from a "blank slate" with the concept of environment coming as a new challenge particularly in terms of personal responsibility. The group leaders and teachers were impressed by the ability of the young people concerned to understand the issues, to generate projects, to appreciate the value of environmental education and to understand that they could make a difference in their own lives - showing that everyone is capable of generating change.

YMCA Scotland
11 Rutland Street
Edinburgh
EH1 2DQ

Telephone: 0131 228 1464
E-mail: info@ymcascotland.org
Website: www.ymcascotland.org