On Wednesday 6th March 2019, Aidan Thompson, Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Jubilee Centre, attended WE Day UK 2019, a celebratory event organised by WE.org to showcase young people who bring about change in their communities through social action. The event included a speech by Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex, who emphasised the importance of values for meaningful social change and called for the 12,000 young people in the audience to ‘Be braver. Be stronger. Be kind to each other. Be kind to yourselves…Exceed expectations…Keep empathy alive…Be honest.’ The Jubilee Centre is delighted to have been able to share in the celebration of young people who are developing their own character through social action, as well as contributing to helping the communities they are a part of to flourish. The Jubilee Centre looks forward to continuing to support and celebrate such work in the future, with WE Schools and the #iwill campaign, and continuing to bring the language of character to the forefront of such discussions. Read Aidan Thompson's reflections on the event in this blog.
Sophie Richardson, Director of WE Schools, said: ‘WE Day is the culmination of young people earning their tickets through social action as part of the WE Schools programme. Through WE Schools young people learn about local and global issues and the causes behind them, as well as developing their own skills and building out action plans that will empower them to take action on the issues they are most passionate about. WE Schools is based on three main learning outcomes which all tie into character education through our Learning Framework.’
WE Schools has achieved significant impact through its work with young people in the UK: when rating the impact of WE Schools on increasing academic engagement, 89% agreed that young people ask more critical questions to reflect on and understand, and 91% agreed that young people are now more capable of effectively voicing their own opinions. Further, 83% of teachers felt better equipped to teach about social justice issues through active citizenship-based learning thanks to WE Schools. To find out more about how to get involved see this page.