Community Peer Mentors

After beginning their placements with Groundwork North-East, this group of ambitious young people went the extra mile to train and become The Key’s first group of young community panel members whilst also beginning their own journey through The Key.

Immediately after completing their training, we saw a huge impact on panels with one young CPM, Ben, attending an immense 9 panels just a few weeks after training. He spoke about his time as a community panel member; "it is always a pleasure to sit on panels with great groups of young people who are clearly passionate about their ideas. I can't think of anything worse than being nervous and the panellist being really boring and uninspiring, so I just try and bring a bit of human element to the job!"

The aspirational group of young volunteers began their first stage of The Key at the same time as becoming fully fledged Young Community Panel Members. Making the most of this opportunity, the four young people planned a team-bonding exercise where they could get to know each other better whilst improving their skills further.

The friendships forged in their stage one gave them the ingenious idea to plan their next project around the things that matter to them. They held a shoebox appeal for the local homeless shelter, something personal to one of the group members, hoping to help the people in their local community. They planned their stage two around the Christmas season with the hopes to give the recipients a little Christmas gift to those that would not generally receive anything.

The generosity of these young people has demonstrated their immense skills progression to communicate the things that matter to them whilst also planning and executing all their projects in what could be described as record time. Their ambition hasn’t faltered as they enter the third stage of The Key.

The ambitious group are going the extra mile in their third Key project and plan to create a clothes bank for young people looking for employment. Amongst many of their activities, they are using their funding to build the foundations of the clothes bank and provide interim packages to these young people while they set up their project. We can't wait to catch up with this incredible group of young men and women as they continue to dream up and deliver their incredible project.

The experience of completing their project inspired this group to go the extra mile and become The Key’s first fully fledged, trained Young Community Panel Members (Young CPM). This voluntary role sees the group inspire and support other young people compelting The Key by sitting on their pitch to panel and acting as friendly dragon’s den members. The opportunity has also been hugely transformative for the group.

Ben, Young Volunteer Community Panel Member said "it is always a pleasure to sit on panels with great groups of young people who are clearly passionate about their ideas!"

“As a panel member, it is extremely fulfilling to see all these different things that are happening. And know that just by basically saying yes [to young people’s Key Projects], we've made a difference.” – Joseph, Young Volunteer Community Panel Member

Keep an eye out for updates of their Key journey!