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Young people who make the world a better place: Positive for Youth
Other | Thursday 16th July 2015 | Federica
Everyone between 10 and 20 years old has a dream. Some aim to make the world a better place. The Legacy Project team knows it and thus created the Positive 4 Youth Awards to help and reward those who actively make a difference in their communities.
In the last few years, the media has been spreading negative stereotypes about the younger generation, depicting them as idle and lazy, but that's not the truth. All across the UK, young people undertake projects that aim to make the communities they live in better, by either protecting the environment or helping local people. The Positive 4 Youth Awards are an aknowledgment to those who are not letting go of society and their dreams of a better place to grow up. The key to the P4Y project is inspiring other young people around the country on the basis of what great stuff their peers manage to do.
Any kind of community voluntary service or artistic project can be submitted to the jury for the competition. There are two categories for the projects, and several awards for each one, such as the Environmental Impact Award for the Community Challenge category, and the Inspirational Lyrics Award for the Express Yourself category. Some boys and girls are inspiring others with their music, some others with the physical help they provide by volunteering in some local community service projects – it doesn't matter how, the point of the whole competition is to show young people in the UK that, however young, anyone can change the world if they want to.
The P4Y Awards have become so popular that the winners and their guests were invited to the Houses of Parliament in 2014. An innovation has been introduced for 2015’s Award, which is to say this year’s competition has a theme. The chosen theme was balance, gender balance specifically. This means that all the projects will have to be about creating or adjusting gender balance in the communities they were designed for.
Interviews have been conducted where people had to answer to the question "What is balance to you?" to figure out how they really perceive the idea and what needs to be done to tangibly create equality.
The winners of 2015’s P4Y Awards will be revealed in October, but the revolutionary message of the whole competition is apparent as soon as one gets to know the Positive 4 Youth movement: people will tell you you’re too young to change the world, they will try to make you feel small or will not aknowledge your efforts. Don’t give up though, because young ones do have the power to make a difference, they can truly make the world a better place and you can even win an award for being a big time dreamer.
For more about P4Y go to their website and follow them on Twitter.
Federica Fiorillo
