Calling all young changemakers: level up your skills and make a difference!
Co-producing projects with Forces Children Scotland can help to develop new skills, build confidence, expand career horizons, and much more
Forces Children Scotland supports over 12,500 children and young people from Armed Forces and veteran families to realise their potential and thrive.
Support is provided through mental health and wellbeing, education and learning, grant giving, youth participation, and policy services.
Want to gain awesome new skills, boost your confidence, and have a real impact on the lives of other young people? Look no further!
Forces Children Scotland is all about helping young people from military families crush their goals. We offer a great programme called Combined | Force, where you get to team up with our creative crew to develop epic projects, services, and campaigns.
Co-production explained in simple terms
We provide young people from Armed Forces communities with invaluable opportunities to co-develop our projects, services, and campaigns. That’s what Combined | Force is all about. We use a four-step process to turn your ideas into reality:
Discovery: We put ourselves in the shoes of others to understand their experiences. You’ll get to chat with other young people and gather intel on what matters most.
Define: We take everything we learn and figure out the biggest issues.
Develop: Brainstorm time! We’ll throw around ideas to come up with solutions to those problems.
Delivery: We pick the best ideas and bring them to life! This could be anything from a website to a podcast or even an app.
Sound exciting? It is! Here’s a real-life example of how it went down:
Queen Victoria School Podcasts
A group of students at Queen Victoria School wanted to help younger kids transitioning to boarding school. Through Combined | Force, they created a killer podcast series with tips and tricks to make that move a breeze. They even got to visit a recording studio and learn how podcasts are made – pretty cool, right?
You can watch our podcast series here.
Our podcast series provides a fantastic example of making things happen through our discovery, define, develop, and delivery phases. Here’s a quick overview of the stages:
We formed a Media Group within the school to get the process started.
Having launched a process of discovery, pupils listened to the voices of younger pupils, who made it very clear more could be done to help them make the move from state to boarding school easier. For many younger pupils, making the jump from state to boarding school at the age of 11 or 12 can prove very challenging.
The define phase set the foundation for the magic to happen. Having listened to the voice of their audience, and reflected on their personal experiences of making this change, pupils defined a set of specific ‘worries’ their audience would have about coming to boarding school.
The develop phase looked at potential solutions to address the worries they had defined. Many pupils live across a wide geographical area before joining the school which became a very important factor when considering ways of reaching their audience to get the message out there.
During the delivery phase, the pupils reviewed lots of their creative ideas and opted to deliver a series of podcasts.
The chosen format meant they could reach their audience in lots of different ways – from websites, social media channels, and sharing through platforms like WhatsApp.
The pupils then mapped out the potential presentation of the podcast episodes in terms of length, format, scripting, participants, backdrops, and much more.
Based on what they had discovered and defined previously, the pupils chose first-day memories, day-to-day routines, and extra-curricular activities as the podcast topics.
The pupils visited Rebel Loop Studios in Glasgow to record the podcast episodes, which provided an exciting introduction to the creative industries.
The experience was an opportunity to see how podcasts are created behind the scenes, including learning about multiple camera set-ups, lighting rigs, and autocue.
It was then time for some of the pupils to get in front of the camera and make their recordings, as well as deliver live coverage on social media platforms like TikTok.
Our podcasts are just one example!
There are tons of ways to get involved, from joining interview panels to co-writing website content. You can even lend your voice to campaigns and events!
Here’s what you get out of it:
Level up your skills: Learn stuff like project management, communication, and creative thinking.
Confidence boost: Get comfortable working with others and presenting your ideas.
Real-world experience: Gain valuable insights into different industries.
College and uni cred: Showcase your experiences on your CV and personal statements.
Make a difference: Help other young people in the Armed Forces community.
We would love to take you through many more examples; however, please visit our website to learn more about our Your Mind Matters Hub, Forces Life Board Game, Tornado of Change Video Campaign, and much more.
You can check out an article about how young people from the Armed Forces and veteran families got involved in our recent event at the Scottish Parliament.
“Getting involved has helped to improve my confidence, and it felt great to do something that would help lots of young people with similar experiences.
The experiences I gained proved very helpful when it came to writing my personal statement for university, so I would say there are lots of benefits to getting involved with Forces Children Scotland – why not simply go for it?”
Think you’ve got what it takes?
If you are from an Armed Forces or veteran family and would like to get involved in co-producing our projects, services, and campaigns, please get in touch admin@forceschildrenscotland.org.uk.