Little Ilford gets Negotiation-Ready

London Citizens' organisers Ben and Emmanuel went into Little Ilford to lead a negotiation training with the three Citizen Schools student teams on Friday 29th January.

The Little Ilford teams, led by Head of Citizenship Alistair Banks, are focused on three change-actions in and around the school and its community: street safe, street clean and road safe. They do what they say on the tin.

Students were given a real-life example scanrio from London Citizens' 'City Safe' campaign, took on roles of those involved (the school, council, local newspaper, church, mosque, local shops, youth club) and spent time preparing their negotiation, building the allies necessary to successfully lobby for support.

A great group of students to work with, the Little Ilford students are now ready to launch their negotiation strategy to make serious change around the school. Well done, leaders!

The Migration Conundrum: Be Part of the Dream Team

London Citizens’ campaigns for the human rights of migrants – Citizens for Sanctuary and Strangers into Citizens – are joining forces with the Citizen Schools team to produce a compelling learning resource around the controversial issue of migration. It’ll be styled on the now famous ‘democracy cookbook’ and provide teachers and students with free access to a comprehensive toolkit of learning around migration, including: Activate! – a huge number of phenomenal learning activities, Real Lives – real life stories of young, real life migrants, Evidence Bank – helping students distinguish fact from fiction, and the YOUCAN toolkit – a guide for young people taking action on the issue.

We’re creating a team of teachers, students, migrants and staff here at London Citizens to advise on, test, add to and launch the resource between now and refugee week in June. If you want to be a part of it, the group will meet once a month and get their hands on the Migration Conundrum ideas and resources 6 months early. Just email ben@citizenschools.info if you’re interested. An example resource is shown below:

The Migration Conundrum - 5th February 2004

View more documents from citizenschools.

Citizen Schools - CHANGE HAS BEGUN!

The Citizen Schools Pathway story so far...

Citizen Schools POWER UP!

The final week of the winter term 2009 saw hundreds of young people from 18 schools across London descend on three schools for the Citizen Schools ‘Power Up’ events, the culmination of 5,000 students’ work through November and December to listen to their communities and create ideas to solve problems common to them.

Students came together to share their ideas, debate and discuss them, and work together to improve them, and the ideas on display were second to none – from City Safe Havens to a 24-hour library to the clear up of a local hotspot, to the creation of graffiti walls – young people’s ideas were community inspired, realistic, sustainable and focused on achieving real change.



Why did students go to all that trouble? – So their ideas are ready for the spring term, when students and citizen school teams – working with their London Citizens borough community organisers – negotiate support for the ideas with real-life power players (councillors, businesses, service providers like the police) and then make them happen… It’s all about real life leadership right now in the real world.