Power of Youth Charter Commitments

Ormiston Trust

Our Commitments to the Power of Youth Charter

The Ormiston Trust is an organisation working to improve life chances for young people in communities across the country and is committed to ensuring that young people’s voices and priorities are at the heart of what we do.

As a strong supporter of the #iWill Movement, and a match funder to the#iWill Fund, we firmly believe in the value and benefits of youth social action for our young people and our local communities.

Currently we are in the process of delivering our multi-million pound #WeWill programme which will enable tens of thousands of students in England to participate in social action projects alongside our regular funding programmes for our schools. We have also established our Youth Advisory Council to bring youth engagement into our organisational structure and are committed to supporting our school communities to facilitate meaningful engagement through the development of toolkit resources.

Therefore, we are proud to become a signatory to the Power of Youth Charter and pledge the following:

1

Prioritise supporting young people to take social action

  • We will have a youth engagement strategy for the organisation and engage young people in multiple aspects of the organisation’s work
  • We will prioritise funding for young people in schools
  • We will ensure a significant focus on youth social action, which emphasises co-creation of plans and projects, with students
  • We will continue to run our Youth Advisory Council and youth advisory sub-groups to inform decision-making both operationally and strategically at the Trust
  • We will ensure an equal opportunities policy for the Ormiston Trust to ensure all backgrounds and cultures of young people are valued equally and engaged in our work
  • We will emphasise students’ skills development in all aspects of our work
  • We will run training sessions for young advisors to prepare them for their roles.

2

Open up our decision-making structures

  • We will meaningfully engage young people in our grants decision making, monitoring and evaluation, resource design and communications work. Our existing Ormiston Trust Youth Advisory Council and sub-groups are already set up to achieve this aim.

3

Work collaboratively with other organisations

  • We will identify and engage in partnerships with organisations that share our values and aims to support young people.

4

Evidence the benefits of youth social action

  • We will continue to undertake proportionate monitoring and evaluation of all our programmes to ensure we understand the difference young people are making.

5

Recognise and celebrate young people's impact

We will continue to celebrate the achievements of young people for instance through:

  • Conferences and events that we and our supported organisations run
  • The annual WeWill week and other key youth impact dates throughout the year
  • Social media posts and case studies reports
  • A youth awards programme plan that is supported by our young advisors

We will review our against these commitments on an annual basis and report back to the Youth Advisory Council and Board of Trustees.

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James is the Chief Executive officer of Ormiston Trust. He has worked as an organisation advisor in the private, public and voluntary sectors, helping organisations to grow sustainably over the medium to long term. He has helped charities for over 20 years in the fields of strategic development, partnership setup, programme and project delivery.

Poppy is the Youth Engagement and Partnership Officer at Ormiston Trust, responsible for coordinating our team of Young Advisors and developing effective working relationships with external organisations. She is currently studying ‘Politics, International Studies and Global Sustainable Development’ at Warwick University and previously worked as Board Advisor for a non-profit youth-focused organisation in Croydon. She has experience in activism work – attending COP26 with environmental education company Force of Nature and had been a member of the UK Youth Parliament for many years, speaking on environmental issues in the House of Commons for its ‘Make Your Mark’ campaign.

Tom heads up Comms and Youth Engagement here at Ormiston Trust. His role focuses mainly on helping run the Youth Advisory Council, as well as heading up our social media accounts and planning events. His creative roots lie in journalism, music and theatre as well as horticulture and creative producing, having been involved in a variety of workshops and projects. Tom is passionate about the environment and politics and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Birmingham in International Relations.

Fiona is the Grants Assistant at Ormiston Trust and in her role she supports the Grants team. Previously, she worked in the City for 10 years, firstly as a dealer on the floor of the London Stock Exchange and then as an equity salestrader.  

Samia is a business and ICT Teacher with over 20 years of leadership experience in Education, working with leaders from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 5. Her experience has ranged from working as an Acting Head Teacher to a Deputy for an Education Trust. Some of the key highlights from her education career have included building schools and setting up education provisions, including a teaching school, and winning several National awards. Samia is passionate about ensuring the young people in her care have the best possible experience and has always led by example by sending her own children to the schools she has been a part of.

Ray leads the youth engagement, partnerships and fundraising work streams at Ormiston Trust, in particular having strategic oversight of how we as an organisation can embed the voices of our young people in everything we do, and how we can work with partner organisations to maximise shared outcomes and opportunities.

His background is in community project development and funding, having worked with charities, schools, and local authorities in East Anglia to develop a plethora of projects including primary-secondary school transition, award-winning youth amateur theatre, social prescribing in rural GP practices, and youth commissioning boards, for which he was recognised as a Prime Minister’s Point of Light.

Ray is a global health and medicine graduate, alongside his work at Ormiston, he is a hospital doctor and public health academic. He is also an #iWill Ambassador and national #iWill Partnership Board member.

Anne is Finance Manager at Ormiston Trust and has worked for Ormiston Trust for over 30 years, overseeing the property portfolio and asset management. She combines her work at the Trust with voluntary community work and has raised thousands of pounds to enhance leisure and education opportunities for young people in disadvantaged communities. 

Karlene is Finance Manager at Ormiston Trust and has been handling the Financial Management of Ormiston Trust since 2014. Her background is in Financial Services with 20 years working in the industry and she has a passion for systems, processes and spreadsheets to enable good finance management. 

Aneela is the Head of Education at Ormiston Trust. Prior to joining Ormiston Trust, she was Head of Professional Development and School Improvement at Beaconhouse Group, overseeing the professional development of over 8000 teachers and implementing systems for school improvement across 200 international schools, in the Southeast region. Prior to this, she worked at Universities in the UAE, where she taught on the Bachelor of Education and Diploma programmes, and previous to this she was a Lead Advisor for Nord Anglia Education services, working with head teachers and principals to raise educational standards across schools in Abu Dhabi.

Melissa is a Programme Management Officer at Ormiston Trust. In her role she supports the #WeWill programme management, and works closely with the monitoring & evaluation, social action toolkit & skills, and youth engagement teams. She completed her undergraduate degree in International Development at the University of Sussex, and her postgraduate degree in Global Health and Development at UCL. Over the last eight years, she has dedicated much of her time to working with non-profit organisations in the UK, Nigeria, China, and Tanzania.