Abbeyhill – Community Ambassadors

Abbeyhill: Community Ambassadors meet the NHS

Seven of our Community Ambassadors facilitated a workshop for Scottish Government and NHS representatives, working together to look at the programme themes of Human Dignity, empathy, trust and kindness which children have identified as being the most important values they want and need from adults.

Together, children and adults took part in activities to consider and discuss those themes, having a conversation about what children want and need from adults, learning from and with each other about how and when we show each other empathy and kindness. By experiencing these values in our relationships, we develop a confidence and trust in adults which enhances our feelings of Human Dignity and safety.

We’d like to thank our friends from Scottish Government and the NHS for making the workshop such a positive experience for our Community Ambassadors.

We include here some of the pledges our friends made on how they will make the lives of children healthier, happier and safer.

“I will……..
Keep exploring
Keep asking questions
Keep listening
And make sure I cat on what I learn
– Harriet

I will………….
Make sure that I do my work in a way that always takes into account what children and young people think and find creative ways to involve children and young people.
– Hazel Crawford

You can see more pledges on our “Adult Pledges” page on this blog.

Abbeyhill: Second Adult Workshop

Our second team of Abbeyhill Community Ambassadors played host to a group of Police School-Liaison Officers.

In their workshop, Community Ambassadors were able to guide the adults through a number of activities, showcasing their work and their learning attained through the programme. Importantly, the activities allowed the Ambassadors to ask some difficult questions, which required thoughtful responses from the participating adults.

Our Ambassadors finished by asking the adult participants to make a pledge to them. This pledge requires adults to think about what they will do to make children’s lives healthier, happier and safer, at home, at school and in their communities.

Due to an extremely busy day and emergency calls, only two Officers were able to attend on this occasion. So, to Verity and Tara, we would like to say a big thank you for taking part and playing such a positive role in making the workshops meaningful and relevant for our Ambassadors. We hope to see your colleagues one day when they are less busy.

Remember, we’ll be back to check up on your pledges…

Abbeyhill: Adult Pledges

Following their workshop with the CP Ambassadors form Abbeyhill on 14/11/17, adult participants made the following pledges:

I PC Verity Jane Ferry, pledge to listen and support all young people, treating them with respect.

PC Tara Adam, pledge to make time to listen to children and try and understand them and what they need from me to improve things for them, their families and people they mix with in all walks of life.

Abbeyhill: Community Ambassadors run their first workshop

Today, a team of our Community Ambassadors ran a workshop for a group of adults. The adults represented Children’s Parliament staff (who haven’t been involved in our programme yet) and Emma and Lizzie, who work with Spartans Alternative School.

Our Ambassadors shared their work and their experiences around adult responses to bullying behaviours at home, in school and in their communities.

Together, we looked at the Ambassadors Passports and “Dignometers” and discussed what we have learned about Human Dignity, Empathy, Trust and Kindness and how all of these things are connected. We played the Ginormous Dice Game, which helped us discuss all of these things and ask challenging questions of the adults. We also listened to Sandy’s Story, a fictional story about a 10-year-old who was experiencing difficult challenges at home, in school and in his community. Together, adults and children rewrote Sandy’s Story to imagine how his life could be made better.

Finally, our Ambassadors asked the adults to make a pledge about how they will make the world a healthier, happier and safer place for children to live and to grow up in. You can see what the adults pledged here.

Big thanks to the adults for taking part in our workshop. We think it’s great that you are listening to us and taking our voices seriously.

Abbeyhill: Adult pledges

Following their training session with Abbeyhill’s Community Ambassadors on 7th November 2017, adults pledged:

Chelsea:
“I promise to ……… really listen to what children are saying to me, speak in a calm voice and take action when it’s needed.”
“Tell other adults about your messages of kindness, trust, empathy and Human Dignity.”
“Explain why things are happening and apologise when I’ve been wrong/ made a mistake.”

Lizzie Booden (Spartans Alternative School Volunteer):
“I pledge to make children’s lives healthy, happy and safe by……………LIstening to children when they tell me things are important to them.”
“By seeing the funny things with the children I look after and not focused on “tasks” # Boring adult tasks.”
“By showing them I care by showing kindness at all times.”

Sandra:
“I pledge not to be judgemental and listen to what children have to say, ask them for their opinion, provide the safe space to discuss matters that concern them and make sure that they have a say and choices in their life.”

Emma Easton (Spartans Alternative School):
“I pledge to talk to the students at Spartans Alternative School about the importance of Human Dignity, Trust, Empathy and Kindness and help them think about bullying in a different way. thank you.”
“Healthy – Happy – Safe. Listen to them – Trust that what they are telling you is true – Time, give children quality time and attention.”

Abbeyhill: revisiting Sandy’s Story

Last week the Community Ambassadors helped to re-write Sandy’s story to change the difficulties he faced, including giving him his own room and a friendly school where everyone was kind. We went through the new story and finding examples of trust, empathy, kindness and human dignity.

Comments and observations

TRUST

“It takes a long time to get trust again if you lie”
“If someone has bullied you or hurt you in the past it is really hard to trust them again”
“When you trust someone you can tell them anything and they will help you”

Watch a short film about Trust: https://youtu.be/X4ntEFpR_80

EMPATHY

“When you put yourself in someone’s shoes”
“Lots of people start bullying because they have had bad experiences- like being bullied themselves or shouted at by their parents”

Watch a short film about empathy: https://youtu.be/U-7lgaBn86M

KINDNESS

“Being friendly, generous, considering others”
“Sharing is important”
“It’s good to help people and make them feel welcome”

Watch a short film about kindness: https://youtu.be/NZPf86NcTJ4

HUMAN DIGNITY

“Children should be seen and heard!”
“Adults need to listen to children so they can protect them”
“Giving children space helps them have human dignity”
“It’s good to be able to help your friends”

Watch a short film about human dignity: https://youtu.be/cY0WbfXWOqM

Abbeyhill: CAPE teams talk about TRUST

In today’s session with our Abbeyhill CAPE teams we looked at Trust and what this means to us.

We began by thinking about the adults we feel we can trust to make our communities feel healthy happy and safe.

We thought that family and friends would be the people we would ask for help. It was more difficult to think about adults we “trust” outside of family. It would have to be someone we knew well and liked.

Then we thought about what we need adults to THINK – FEEL and DO so that we trust them.

Our question to adults about TRUST is: What do children need to THINK- FEEL & DO before they can ask an adult for help and support?

Abbeyhill: Sandy’ Story

In this session, our Community Ambassadors listened to a story about Sandy. Sandy is a fictional character, a 10-year-old boy who experiences challenges at home, in his community and in school.

Our Ambassadors explored the concept of empathy through hearing Sandy’s Story. Empathy is when you are able to see things from somebody else’s perspective. By putting ourselves in others’ shoes and feeling what someone else is feeling, we can better understand how our choices impact on other people.

Ambassadors listened to Sandy’s story and afterwards explored ways that the story could be better for Sandy. To read Sandy’s Story for yourself please click the link:

CP Investigates (Sandy’s Story)

Our Community Ambassadors thought Sandy’s life could be made better by adults supporting his journey to school and his gaining the confidence, courage and strength to ask his teachers for help.

Our question to adults is: Can you remember how you felt if you were bullied when you were 10 years old?

CAPE Abbeyhill: Safe and Happy Community

During our Community Ambassadors session today we looked at and discussed our Community – the place where we live, play and belong.

Using large treasure maps to represent our Community we thought about the fun places – the safe places – the unsafe places in our Community and we drew them on our maps. We put happy – unhappy – neutral face stickers on our maps to represent the safe – unsafe places and those spaces which could be better.

Have a look at some of our maps and let us know what you think. Why are some parks only safe during the day? Our home, the place we grew up is special to us, can you think why?

Comments and views;

“We want the police in our Community”

“We want less police with weapons”

“Playing basketball with a team in my community makes me feel like I belong here”

“Sometimes Montgomery Park is dodgy”

“I feel safe in my house”

“Easter Road on match day can feel crazy”

“I like Holyrood Park because I go there with my family”

“I don’t always feel safe when I visit my auntie” (lives in a different area)

“Friends are really important to us in our community” (friends who live nearby)

“Shopkeepers aren’t always friendly. They have signs saying only two children allowed. I was accused of stealing by a stall keeper for picking something up to look at. The stall was selling kids stuff”

Drawings on treasure map;

Fun school – Museum – Tennis Courts – Pump Track – Racing Track

Our question for adults is “What can you do to make our communities safe and happy place for us to grow up?”

Abbeyhill: Community Ambassadors

Children’s Parliament are back in Abbeyhill.

Graeme, Colin and Marion visited to work with P7 on a brand new project called Community Ambassadors Programme in Edinburgh (CAPE).

Together we looked at experiences that children can have which removes their human dignity – and the experiences which can build children’s dignity and feelings of self worth.

We put our feelings and experiences on our “Dignometers” some of which are posted above. We hope you enjoy them 😀

Our questions for adults from this session are; What does human dignity mean to you? and Can you remember an experience which left you feeling small, put down or sad?