Fair Education Alliance Youth Summit 2024

I was recently lucky enough to attend the Fair Education Alliance Youth Summit as a representative of First Story. It’s difficult to explain what it’s like to be in a room full of people who genuinely care about making a difference, especially when all these people are a similar age to you. I just wanted to meet everyone, talk about their organisations and what change they want to see. I like to say I’ve developed a knack for public speaking, this does not however translate to one to one. The most challenging part of the day was having the confidence to insert myself into conversations. I would also say this was one of the best things about the day, slowly gaining the confidence to talk to different people, finding people with similar interests to me and similar experiences to me. It was beautiful to be in a room so full of diversity whilst still being able to find that common goal.

At the event, I developed crucial skills required for my continued mental health and disability activism and how to connect and network with people who have similar goals to me or skills that I could learn from. My favourite part of the day was speaking with education leaders in the government about how to make youth voice heard in the future changes of the system. I was privileged to be able to ask a question about integrating accurate and in depth education on neurodiversity and other minority groups in the hope of reducing the idea that minorities are just for holidays and awareness days and encouraging acceptance over tolerance.

It was really empowering to know that others felt the same and I was able to have conversations with many of my peers about my experiences and my opinions on how to tackle this inequality. I feel really privileged to have been able to attend this event and I am unbelievably grateful to First Story for this and all the other opportunities they have given me since the Young Writers Programme. I will take the lessons I learnt at this event with me as I continue to advocate for underrepresented groups and diversify my experiences in public speaking.

Tilly completed the First Story Young Writers Programme at Landau Forte College Derby. They took part in the virtual Young Writers Residential in 2020. In 2023/24 they were awarded a Folio Academy Mentorship and were mentored by Peter Hobbs. They represented First Story at the Fair Education Alliance’s 2024 Youth Summit. Read more about Tilly here.

Photos courtesy of Fair Education Alliance.