Reviewing Existing Practice/Consulting with Service Users

PeaceMaker’s review of existing practice with young people

PeaceMaker was created by young people in 1997 who were concerned by the prejudice and segregation that they saw occurring around them. PeaceMaker’s work has always been informed by, and heavily reliant on, the active involvement of young people.

In fact, many of our projects are developed and directly delivered by young people. PeaceMaker has now been doing this work for almost 11 years. Unfortunately, none of our founding members, as much as they would like to, can claim to be young anymore. Additionally, many of the young people that work with us have been at PeaceMaker since 2003 and are now leaving us to go to university.

In order to ensure that our portfolio of work is still relevant to the needs of young people, we have been conducting a comprehensive review of our work, led by our peer educators and the young people that participate in our projects.

These young people are working with trustees and senior members of staff to review the relevance and impact of our work in Oldham and also how this relates to the interests and concerns of young people across the country. They are also identifying the gaps in our service delivery and creating new project ideas to address the current needs and concerns of young people in Oldham and across the North of England.

What makes this case study successful?
PeaceMaker’s engagement with young people places them at the centre of the development, delivery, and evaluation of our projects so that they will remain relevant to the issues of concern for young people in Greater Manchester.