A group of young people from Ysgol Greenhill in Tenby have been working with youth workers in school on numerous projects this past year - tackling hard hitting topics such as gender-based violence, substance misuse and men’s mental health.

The groups are continuing to drive these subjects through their project aims for the year, which has led to a once in a lifetime trip opportunity in October, when a group of 16 will travel to Auckland for a 2 week stint exploring New Zealand and visiting projects seeing what they are doing to address and support victims of gender-based violence.

The group are extremely excited about this opportunity and are looking forward to sharing ideas and experiences, with a hope of finding new ideas to bring back to Wales.

The group originally started as a girls group, which they named the ‘You Should Know’ project. The group came together after a discussion around feeling safe and feeling vulnerable.

As part of this project, the group researched and carried out interviews with women from all occupations and ages.

They wanted to know how women/girls feel when they are alone at night and they wanted to share this with everyone to raise awareness.

From their research, the girls created a video, this video launched on social media on White Ribbon Day 2023, and was shared widely across numerous social media platforms throughout the UK.

Around this time, the youth workers had linked with Plan International and arranged for a very special guest to visit the school all the way from New Zealand.

Mataio Brown the co-founder of the global movement ‘She Is Not Your Rehab’ - delivered a hard hitting, inspirational talk to the whole of year 10, 11 and sixth form.

Mataio Brown with Greenhill youth workers
Mataio Brown with Greenhill youth workers (Pic supplied)

This successful and inspirational event led to the creation of the youth project ‘His Path, His Journey’ and it was from this that Ysgol Greenhill took on the white pledge for white ribbon. This again pushed a strong message through our social media that we stand together and support work being done to prevent gender-based violence.

On May 3, a group of 20 young people and 6 youth workers were heading to Pen Y Fan with the aim to raise money for men’s mental health and domestic abuse charities.

The two groups will be continuing their work as single projects each striving to promote, raise awareness and create safe spaces for their targeted topics.