Power The Fight Alumni Programme Extends Ongoing Support to Young People It Helps
We caught up with Nicole Burgess and Yasmin Elizabeth about their vital work at the youth violence intervention charity Power the Fight, the experiences that inspired their activism, and how the Alumni programme is supporting and nurturing the next generation of peace advocates.
Power The Fight Founder, Ben Lindsay
Among the many impressive accomplishments of both women, something that’s particularly striking about Nicole and Yasmin – both now in influential roles at Power the Fight – is that they’d not only had the charity on their radars long before they joined, but had been actively determined to work there someday.
“I’ve wanted to work for Power for a very long time, and I’d been following them on Instagram and LinkedIn since it first started. In fact, I first saw Ben (the CEO) in the Prince of Peckham and made him follow me on LinkedIn,” laughs Nicole, who is now a senior practitioner at Power the Fight and the manager of the Alumni programme.
“THE ALUMNI PROGRAM IS AN INITIATIVE DESIGNED TO EXTEND PTF’S ENGAGEMENT WITH THOSE WHO HAVE COMPLETED ITS THERAPEUTIC INTERVENTION FOR PEACE PROGRAM, WHICH PROVIDES MENTAL HEALTH AND LIFE SKILLS SUPPORT FOR YOUNG PEOPLE WHO ARE AT RISK OF BEING INVOLVED IN VIOLENCE.”
“This was like, three years before I got the job. We had lunch on my first day and I was like, ‘I’ve been waiting for this you know!’”
Meanwhile Yasmin – who has worked for PTF as both a digital content lead and therapeutic youth practitioner, and is now consulting for the Alumni project – knew Ben through her church, where he’d been her pastor. During covid lockdown, she had been asked to share some of her experiences with youth violence for what became the Therapeutic Intervention for Peace (TIP) report. A few months later, she felt compelled to offer her professional brand and social media expertise too: “Ben was posting on Power the Fight, as he does, and I kept messaging like, ‘Hey, you know, you can change this,’ or ‘you shouldn't post like that,’ or ‘it could be like this,’” she smiles. The feedback was well received – Ben asked if she could come onboard to guide them in a more official capacity, and she joined the team.
Her passion for the cause has been fuelled by her own painful experiences with community violence as a young person. “I’ve channelled a lot of my grief into action, and into the activism of trying to create change and be what my younger self needed at that time,” she explains. “I have a real understanding, especially for the young girls in this context, because often they’re forgotten about. Think about the funerals: even at a young age, you end up in that mothering, nurturing role – serving the food, helping mum at the side of the grave, or consoling your boy mates because they don’t speak to each other like that. You’re assuming this role that’s way beyond your capacity at that age.”
And while this lived experience gives her a profound insight into the challenges faced by the young people that Power the Fight supports, such a deep involvement in work that’s closely entwined with personal trauma can take its toll. For Yasmin, while this has meant having to step back somewhat from Power the Fight's frontline operations, working on the Alumni project has provided the ideal balance: "I can have my hand in it and help out and be involved, but from a distance that's quite safe for me – for where I'm at, the season I'm in."
The opportunity to benefit from continued involvement in the work of Power the Fight is also, in many ways, the goal that inspired the creation of the Alumni programme itself: an initiative designed to extend PTF’s engagement with the young people who have completed its Therapeutic Intervention for Peace program, which provides mental health and life skills support for young people who are at risk of being involved in violence.
“Our TIP program is typically 10-12 weeks, which means that after that point, we often don’t know [what happens] – we’re not in contact with them.” Nicole explains. “So the Alumni program looks at how we can extend our engagement and extend our contact with these young people. Taking them on trips and having socials, having lunch together, that sort of thing, while also helping them develop certain skills through workshops – helping with their CVs, for example.”
The hope is that, in time, those who graduate from TIP into the Alumni network will also play a role in shaping the future of the organisation – something that was already beginning to play out here at CIC headquarters, when several young people joined Yasmin, Nicole and brand designer George Stuart to share their own thoughts and ideas for the new Alumni brand toolkit. “They did not hold back,” laughs Yasmin, recalling the meeting. “We were hearing what they definitely did not want. But George really heard them, really took on the things that they said, and you saw it come alive creatively. As a creative and somebody who's worked on the other side of Power to Fight, it was really fun to just see all ideas come to life – he really captured what we were asking for without knowing what we were asking for.”
She’s proud to show the output to young people, and believes that the brand toolkit will prompt an increase in take-up for the programme. “But also it allows us to actually create content aimed at young people, by young people, and it’s fun for them to create stuff,” she says. “We’re going to be doing merchandise and things like that – stuff that we’ve really held back on, but now we’ve got this really cool toolkit that we get to work with.”
And it’s exactly the kind of collaboration that exemplifies the core values of the Alumni programme: Connection, Empowerment, and Co-production. “Co-production means we’re creating and developing this programme not just for the young people, but with them. We’re building it together, and we’re empowering them to drive and define that vision too,” explains Nicole, adding that in the long-term, she would like to form a Youth Advisory Board through which young people could influence not just the Alumni, but the direction and strategy of Power The Fight itself. “It’s about making sure that that co-production is being woven through the whole of the charity,” she says.
Power the Fight is an award-winning charity that empowers communities to help end the violence affecting young people. The goal of their Alumni Programme is to expand opportunities by enabling their talented and passionate young people to assume leadership roles in projects, and through the shaping and delivery of therapeutic interventions within the service.
Website: https://www.powerthefight.org.uk/
Instagram: @powerthefightuk