The Youth Leadership Group
The Youth Leadership Group (YLG) are a group of 12 young people aged between 16-25, who have been selected from across the UK to spark a national conversation of change by addressing and tackling the issues of youth loneliness and isolation. Their role is to lead projects, campaigns, and research to empower communities and strive for systemic change. They will speak beyond the data, sharing stories and experiences of youth loneliness, to create an experience of inspiration and motivation to act.
The research report summary
This report highlights our findings from research we have been undertaking with young people and youth workers across the youth sector to help us understand the role of youth organisations in supporting young people facing loneliness. The last two years have seen an unprecedented change in the sector and presented new challenges to young people they may never have faced before. We now know that this has had a significant impact on young people’s feelings of loneliness.
![We Choose to Be Here - Belong Collective report](https://www.ukyouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/We-Choose-To-Be-Here.png)
“We choose to be here” – our latest Belong Collective report
‘We choose to be here’ describes the essential role that youth organisations play in helping young people to overcome these feelings of loneliness in the face of such a challenging period. By helping them to connect with others, make new friendships and explore their own identity, youth organisations act as vital outlets for young people. Through their own choices to participate in activities and groups that youth organisations provide, young people are making an empowered step to challenge their feeling of loneliness and create a new future for themselves.
This research not only describes how youth organisations play this essential role but also, reflects on a challenging two years for the youth sector, and how we can learn from this time to build future policies and practices that policymakers, youth workers and young people can draw upon to create real change.
The research acts as a follow-up to our 2018 report, ‘A Place to Belong’, which first helped to set out a series of strategic and delivery-level recommendations, including both the need for further research into youth loneliness and a space for a network of youth workers and organisations to come together, share advice, experience and create innovative solutions.
Read our latest report here