Vinspired
Vinspired
25 May 2024 ·

How I helped make sure Team v put young people at the heart of their future work

How I helped make sure Team v put young people at the heart of their future work

Charlee Bennett, one of our Team v leaders from Wokingham, explains what it was like to take part in the peer evaluation of Team v...


After completing my second campaign working to prevent isolation and loneliness in older people, I offered to run a community jury session in my community as part of CFE's peer evaluation.

I decided to partake in the assessment as I thought it would be a really good chance to see how my team and I managed to affect our community and if we had made any positive changes. We all received feedback from the individuals we helped at the events but this was only brief and I was excited to find out what our organisations really thought of the campaign.

To get people on board for the meeting was fairly easy, the two local organisations I have worked with have both been very supportive throughout the campaign and were more than happy to take part. It was also easy to find older people and volunteers who wanted to attend. The problem was getting them all in the same place at the same time!

On the day we had a good bunch there, some very vocal older people, one volunteer and one of my organisations. It was hard to make sure everyone knew that they were not evaluating me so we could get some honest answers - and I'm hoping that we did. It was fantastic to hear that the work we had been doing had made a really positive impact on the older peoples’ lives and how thankful they are that we are continuing to run social events.

I was most intrigued to find out what our local befriending service for the elderly thought of the work we had done. As an organisation well established in the community I wanted to see if they saw what we have done as different to their work. They were very impressed with the fresh ideas we had come up with and the energy a young group creates.

Running a community jury in Wokingham was an interesting experience that gave me a lot of insight into what all stakeholders in the campaign thought of young people in general, us as a group and the specific effects of our campaign.

It has confirmed my want to continue with the social events for the elderly as the national campaign was only set to run for 7 weeks originally. It made me appreciate my team of volunteers and how wonderful they have been during this campaign and it was fantastic to be able to give such positive feedback to them afterwards.