Youth Achievement Awards

The Youth Achievement Awards are a peer education approach to recognising and accrediting young people's achievements. They are designed to encourage young people to take a more active role in the youth work activities that interest them.

Young people come together and form an Award Group. Members of the Award Group (guided by their Award Group Worker) are responsible for supporting each other to set and plan appropriate challenges and to identify the learning targets within them.

Once the young person has completed a challenge they review what they did and how they felt about it with their Award Group. Young people record their experiences in their challenge booklets and organise portfolios of evidence.

THE AWARDS

Recognise and accredit young people's achievements.
Encourage progressive responsibility and ownership of learning.
Provide a mechanism by which to measure the quality of work with young people.
Reinforce good practice.
Encourage participation and social inclusion.
Use peer education.

THEY ENABLE YOUNG PEOPLE TO

Enhance self awareness and self-esteem
Develop communication skills and resolve differences by negotiation
Get on with and work well with others
Explore and manage feelings
Understand and identify with others
Develop values
Plan ahead

Our team at Avon Tyrrell can help you provide activities for one or more challenges. Each challenge should take 15 hours to complete. We can also assist in building portfolios and getting young people set on the road to completing their awards.

For more details on how the Youth Achievement Awards may best work with your group, please visit the YAA pages of the UK Youth website, or download the Youth Challenge and Youth Achievement Awards Information Pack.