by Richard Norman, Chief Executive at the Leadership Skills Foundation
At the Leadership Skills Foundation, we are passionate about empowering young people to shape their future and lead their communities. We believe that this starts by supporting children and young people to have the confidence to believe in their skills and their potential to make a positive difference to not only their futures but also for their peers, and in their communities.
This week we have published our latest impact report, reflecting on 2022-23 academic year through a series of personal learner stories, centre insights and statistics from our centre and learner surveys.
The report shows the journeys that our learners go through to overcome their own challenges, boost their confidence and achieve things they never thought possible.
You can download and read the report here >>
Since launching our new identity as the Leadership Skills Foundation in August this year, our central objective is to be known as the trusted voice for leadership skill development for the benefit of all young people and their communities.
That starts by empowering young people to believe that they can make a difference. It focuses on encouraging them to build and test their skills and to go out into their communities, learning how they can influence and inspire those around them.
Throughout our impact report, we highlight stories where learners have achieved just this – from Cora discovering a new passion and career path based on inspiring others, to Ben overcoming immense anxiety to become a leader. Across the board, our learners continue to provide us with the examples and energy to keep doing what we believe in.
And despite it being a challenging time across education and so many communities, the teachers, community leaders and educators who continue to go above and beyond to support young people show us how developing learners’ confidence, self-belief and resilience are top of their (long) list of priorities.
To make sure we continue to deliver programmes that are relevant to young people, this year, we launched our first-ever impact surveys as part of our global research project. By speaking to learners and centre staff, we wanted to understand how we can better support centres as they try to balance providing opportunities for pupil wellbeing and personal development against a very crowded curriculum. The results from these surveys are now in and feature prominently throughout our impact report, demonstrating clearly that we need to consider the whole individual when we look at the skills they need for their onward journey.
Looking ahead for the Leadership Skills Foundation, we have an exciting future: we are passionate about providing opportunities for more young people to build leadership skills and we are working towards this goal by strengthening our existing partnerships and finding new organisations to collaborate with.
In the coming days, we will be announcing a partnership with two globally renowned organisations on our latest venture: Environment Leadership. Watch this space…
It’s clear that today’s young people will face challenges not experienced by previous generations. These new challenges and opportunities will need new ways of thinking and innovative solutions.
While the pandemic may be an increasingly distant memory, its effects are still being felt by many young people, and if it taught us anything, it is that we are a global community. It is more important than ever that we all work together to make sure that children and young people have the foundations they need to thrive in the future and shape the world they want to see. We must provide the opportunities for young people to build the confidence to believe, the qualities to lead and the skills to succeed.
By transitioning to our new identity as the Leadership Skills Foundation, I believe we will be in a better position to support centres to adapt to the challenges and opportunities that come their way in the coming years.
We’re excited about the future and what it might hold for us and our learners. It is energising and inspiring to learn more about our learners, their achievements and how our programmes impact them – and it gives us further fuel for our passion for empowering more young people to shape the world around them.