We Stand Ready: Lead and Be Led Social Action

My name is Ayan Hussein and I was part of this year’s cohort of Lead and Be Lead cohort 2022!  

At first, I was really nervous, and really out of my comfort zone as I was going to be interacting with people that I had never met, but the environment was welcoming, full of engaging and friendly peers! It was really easy to make friends and connect with the others in the programme along with my mentors, who constantly helped and assisted me along the way.

In the sessions, we learnt about different components and skills that the attributes needed for learning, life and work such as emphasises social and emotional competencies, including self-awareness, collaboration, empathy, relationship-building, conflict resolution, and problem solving.  We also learnt how to present and pitch an idea effectively which has been a wonderful experience overall. From these sessions, I improved my public speaking, how to present myself at job interviews,  my decision-making skills, communication skills, and time management skills along with improving my overall confidence as a young person. 

In the future, I’m interested in going into law or teaching, so I learnt and practiced these fundamentals skills throughout the programme! We learnt how youth social action not only creates change in communities but provides us [young people] to develop confidence, team working skills, communication and experience that will help us transition into further education, training or employment.

We decided on what social action campaign to do through listing down different problems and issues that we wanted to be tackled in our communities, and we narrowed it down to youth employment issues, which became the cause of our campaign. Planning a social action campaign was so exciting. I became a project lead, and it was the first time I was put in charge of organising an event. It was nerve-wracking but I gained many valuable skills from my previous lessons and my mentors! I learnt how to properly plan for an event, how to work with a team to organise it and how to approach different problems and risks. 

Being in an environment where we as young people were encouraged to take the initiative was so important for improving my confidence and delivery of the campaign. Not to mention how comfortable and friendly everyone was during the entire programme! 

I loved being a part of this programme and I wish I had the opportunity to do it again to be honest. I would definitely recommend this programme to all young people who are looking to build their confidence and other skills while also being in a fun new environment!