I am often asked why our charity exists and why there seems to be so much interest in our behaviour modification mentoring course.  

Read on to find out why...

Figures show that Milton Keynes is in the top 10 places in the UK for
classroom violence. 

The statistics show that on average, there are 55 assaults in school per day across the country. In 2012/13 there were 10,750. 

Milton Keynes saw 779 incidents over a the two year period in classrooms across the city, the fifth most in the country.

The figures were obtained from 70 local authorities in England and Wales by the Sun on Sunday via a Freedom of Information Act.

Life Skills for Children : New - The ultimate anti-bullying and personal deve...

Life Skills for Children : New - The ultimate anti-bullying and personal deve...: New - The ultimate anti-bullying course for young people is available to BUY NOW! This book was written to support parents and teacher...

New - The ultimate anti-bullying and personal development course for young people is available to BUY NOW!

New - The ultimate anti-bullying course for
young people is available to BUY NOW!

This book was written to support parents and teachers in their quest to raise safe, confident, happy young people. 

Gary Payne is a veteran of the personal safety and development sector, and has dedicated over 25 years to developing and deploying training solutions for numerous organisations and individuals, including Police and Military personnel. 

The Life Skills for Children course is easy to learn and provides some very powerful messages, designed to increase a young persons confidence, personal safety, communication skills and ability to socially interact positively with their peers. 

The content of the course can be delivered to young people from 5 to 16 years and is a great way for families to learn some key skills together. 

The Life Skills for Children course has been successfully delivered to thousands of young people with some amazing results. The statistics below, taken from the first 7,000 young people who experienced the course, clearly demonstrate the                                                  fantastic results that are achievable with this course.

- 5,623 kids stated they feel more confident (80%) 
- 6,786 kids felt safer (97%) 
- 6,034 kids had better communication skills (86%) 
- 5,728 kids had better problem solving skills (82%) 
- 6,278 kids could set & achieve goals (90%) 

The course is the heartbeat of the Young People are our Future charity, which delivers the course to young people through schools, special education facilities and behaviour management groups. 

As a preventative measures course, Life Skills for Children will help young people who: Are being bullied, Have poor communication skills, Lack confidence, Lack self-esteem, Have behaviour issues, Have no motivation or drive. 

This course is a great addition to any parent or teacher who wants to provide their children with some real life skills that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

What a great 1st YEAR Thank you to everyone involved with the charity It has been just over one year since the Young People are our Future charity was born and what a great year it has been. The Life Skills for Children course has been successfully delivered to 8,102 young people, over 100 families have participated in the family forum sessions, 19 mentoring courses have been completed and over 40 activity workshops have been run all over the city of Milton Keynes. Community Activities The charity has run a number of FREE events for young people including sport, dance, drama, first aid and self-defence. A massive thank you to the event tutors, your contribution has been fantastic. We are currently looking for event tutors to assist us in 2014. Click here to find out more information Schools We have managed to interact with a lot of young people within their schools. The Life Skills course has been delivered through the PSHE curriculum. We have developed a school partnership scheme, which has been joined by several local schools. Our school work has enabled us to interact with parents and provide some successful family forum sessions. Schools on board include: St Monica's, Stantonbury Campus, Jubilee Wood, Shenley Brook End, Hanslope Primary and Summerfield. Mentoring Courses Designed as a behaviour modification course, the mentoring course has been delivered to over 300 young people. The mentoring course has been delivered in primary and secondary schools,and Pupil Referral Units The Team A huge thank you to all of those team members who made this year a great success, especially Destine, Michelle, Tony, Kam, Chris, Andy, Peter, Hannah, Josh, Samuel, Lewis, Aliyah, Milan, Sam, Harry.

Click the logo and help us raise money to put the next 8,000 young people through the life skills course.

Why do we wait for the horse to bolt before we lock the gate

As I reflect on yet another successful delivery of the life skills course, I find myself once again asking the question, why do so many parents wait for something traumatic to happen before they are forced to educate their children in the skills required to keep them safe?

Nearly 40 minutes of today’s two hour session was dedicated to an 11 year old boy who has been the victim to a series of bullying incidents that could so easily have been prevented. His parents were outraged at the lack of support they received from their sons school prior the summer holidays and yet they were unintentionally adding fuel to the situation by creating additional trauma to the young boy.

Most of us are guilty of waiting for the final payment letter to drop through the letterbox before we react, or leave it to the final minute before making our way to a meeting that we really do not want to attend. There has to be a point where we say to ourselves, this is too important to just leave and hope it goes away.

Over a 25 year career I have witnessed thousands of examples of people who have just left it to late and have unfortunately paid the consequences.

Women I have worked with in refuges who for numerous reasons have found it difficult to leave their violent partners only to feel the full force of their anger.

Men who work in a dangerous industry and yet have a belief system that nothing BAD is every going to happen to them until their lives are put in danger.

Parents who think there children will stroll through life without ever facing hurdles such as bullying until the child breaks their silence through a social network site or conversation with a friend.

Despite the sometimes horrific stories we hear via the news or depicted in movies, we all to often programme ourselves to say it will never happen to us. When it does, we spend the next few weeks and months asking WHY?

In many ways the most difficult part of my job over the years has been to let people who have become victims to violence, know that the trauma they have experienced could have been reduced and in many cases completely avoided.

Of course this trauma often leads to a number of long term negative personality traits such as low confidence, self-esteem, poor communication skills and mindset, so waiting for something to happen before we react, can and often does devastate lives.

I have a number of friends within the personal safety industry across the world who regularly tell me stories of people that have attended their classes after a violent episode in the lives. Teaching these individuals some practical and simple safety skills becomes a much larger task when you are faced with a series of psychological hurdles.

For me, this demonstrates that this issues of waiting until the horse has bolted before locking the gate is not restricted to a demographic location, nor is it restricted to a specific culture, religion and skin colour.

Human beings everywhere have and continue to programme their brains to assume nothing will happen to either themselves or their children.

The cost of rehabilitating victims of violence in this country alone runs into billions of pounds, and it is only going to get worse as we spend more time indulging in technology that on one had reduces the opportunities for us to socially interact with others and on the other hand encourages us through games to kill each other and live out our violent fantasies in the comfort of our bedrooms.

Whilst in the process of networking locally, I was amazed at the number of support groups that had been set up in Milton Keynes to provide guidance to people after an incident had occurred.

Some of these groups provide a fantastic service, however it seems to me many of these groups are fueling this silly thought process of waiting to late by presenting an image to potential clients that they will be there to mop up the pieces when it goes wrong.

Every course I have written and deployed has been about preventative measures training. Educating people in the skills to assess and avoid a potentially dangerous situation before it happens makes so much sense. I realise that this is not always possible, but by providing people with a set of skills to prepare them to reduce the amount of physical damage they might endure will in turn reduce the amount of trauma they suffer.

The long term benefits of having a society driven by preventative measures initiatives instead of trauma mop us services, will save the tax payer millions of pounds and more importantly will result in a faster rehabilitation process for those still unfortunate enough to experience some level of confrontation.

The Young People are our Future charity provides young people and their families with a preventative measures life skills course.

Show your support for providing people with the right skills before it is too late by liking the charities face book page. 

https://www.facebook.com/YoungPeopleAreOurFuture

Check out the website: www.youngpeopleareourfuture.org 

Article written by Gary Payne

Training to beat Bullying: Personality over Qualifications

Training to beat Bullying: Personality over Qualifications: Just a couple of weeks after thousands of young people received their examination results, I am starting to meet and work with many peop...

Personality over Qualifications

Just a couple of weeks after thousands of young people received their examination results, I am starting to meet and work with many people who are not in a celebratory mood.

Young people who have left school with poor qualifications and have fallen into a depressing cycle of doom and gloom over their future.

The pressure that is placed upon young people from their parents, schools, potential employers and society can very often become too much.

We all appreciate the importance of having a good set of qualifications, but surely having a good set of personality based skills are just as essential for young people.

Many of us will know of individuals who have the right qualifications on paper to get their job, but unfortunately lack the personality and social interaction skills to be effective and positive members of the team.

The education system is designed to produce individuals with a set of qualifications that meet the requirements of potential employers, but many parents will argue that a good percentage of the material taught to their children is largely ineffective and not appropriate.

A driving force behind the Young People are our Future charity is the concept of educating them in the importance of personality over qualifications.

Young people are taught to appreciate how to develop their confidence and self-esteem by engaging in activities that encourage them to dream, set goals, believe in themselves, communicate positively with those around them, work in a team and problem solve.

I am constantly placed in front of young people who at their core are enthusiastic, passionate and driven but, year after year since they entered into the schooling system they have been taught to focus on the wrong skills, which has left them to display a hollow image of their real personality.

It is about time we woke up and realised that having a rich personality that approaches life positively with the ability to communicate well and navigate the problems that life inevitably throws at us all should be a part of the core curriculum at school.

There should be sessions where parents are taught the importance of NOT placing unnecessary pressure on their children when going through school and the importance of teaching them some core personality development skills.

Employers need to take stock and adjust their recruitment procedures to take into consideration the benefits of employing young people with the right personality rather than making decisions purely on grades.

There are so many positive examples of individuals over the years who have left school with little or no qualifications and yet through having the right skills within their personality have become very successful. We have to acknowledge that something has to change if we are to stop thousands of young people every year going through a period of doom and gloom trying to come to terms with their immediate future.

 

 

Training to beat Bullying: Why start a charity?

Training to beat Bullying: Why start a charity?: Life deals each and every one of us with a series of challenges though our lives that test our knowledge, determination, r...

Why start a charity?

Life deals each and every one of us with a series of challenges though our lives that test our knowledge, determination, resilience and problem solving skills, so when we decide to take on additional challenges like setting up a charity to help others you have to ask WHY?

Why put yourself through the endless and frustrating task of navigating through a mountain of red tape. 

Why spend hours, days and weeks trying to get people to attend presentations.

Why completely exhaust yourself trying to make a small difference in the lives of others.

The last few months have been full of WHY’s and I am so grateful we stuck with it. Having successfully navigated through the early stages of setting up the Young People are our Future charity, the project team and I are starting to see the benefits of providing the services within the project.

In just a couple of months over 800 young people have experienced the proven Life Skills for Children course through community events and mentoring courses run in local schools.

The pilot of this course saw an additional 5,000 young people experience the course with some amazing results.

So, what is it? Life Skills for Children is an early intervention course designed to provide young people from 5 years + with some practical and realistic tools to increase their personal safety, communication skills, confidence, self- esteem and ability to assess and avoid a bullying incident.

Between the pilot and the YPAOF charity young people in North London, Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes have benefitted from this simple to deliver course.

The pilot was so successful that interest from 19 countries was registered and the course is now being deployed through children’s centres in Vietnam, India, Iran, South Africa and Sweden.

The Young People are our Future project is built around the Life Skills course and is set up to educate, inspire and motivate young people to become the best they can be. 

The project team has been overwhelmed with support for the project with hundreds of parents supporting our ultimate goal of putting these simple life skills into the PSHE curriculum in schools. 

We all appreciate the importance of education and learning how to read and write, however having these skills but no social skills, confidence or good communication skills is like teaching somebody to drive and placing them in a car with no engine. – They will not go anywhere.

The secret to achieving anything is to have the right mind-set, to have the right skills to enhance that mind-set and the right support to continually develop that mind-set.

The Life Skills for Children course provides the foundation for this personal development journey.

A key objective of the charity is to provide a sustainable educational service to local young people and their families as this will increase the success of the life skills course and will enable the project to positively impact the lives of those around the young people themselves.

This is done in several ways including the development of the “Kids teach Kids” team, which is made up of young people who are trained to deliver the course material to other young people across the city. The charity is also providing parenting life skills sessions so that a set of consistent set of messages can be introduced to families.

Finally, we have established a train the trainer system, which is already producing local life skills coaches who have the skills to deploy the course to a wider target audience.

In just a few months the WHY’s are diminishing and an optimism about how many young people the charity can positively benefit is growing. As a community project it is largely reliant on the support of local groups to develop the right momentum. Local parish councils and clubs are working together within the project, clearly demonstrating that when local knowledge and expertise is shared everyone benefits.

Whilst moving in the right direction the charity has had to overcome and continues to embrace many hurdles. Schools that are so reluctant to get involved despite the charity offering them free staff training in the life skills course and free after school activities, clubs that are so unprofessional they fail to attend events to run a one hour workshop, parents who think the charity is a day care centre and try to use the events as a drop of centre and those whilst parents who clearly fall under the category “Bad Parent” and feel their children do not require any life skills despite a mountain of evidence demonstrating that their children require some form of intervention.

It seems whatever the cause, charities who have the singular mission to help others have to endure a constant struggle to overcome these kinds of hurdles, despite having a huge amount of support, ironically often from the same people who cause some of these hurdles.

Young People are our Future has created a solid foundation on which to grow and one thing is clear at this very early stage of the charities development, the Life Skills course has and continues to be very successful and the statistics supporting the course look impressive.

www.youngpeopleareourfuture.org