Restless Development conducted its Annual Young Leaders survey with current volunteers and alumni who led our work in 2021.
Young people who lead our work are our greatest asset. There are a wide range of ways in which young people volunteer their time and lead our work. Young leaders work with us as community based peer-educators and mobilisers; advocates, campaigners and researchers; to online communicators sharing blogs and social media content.
We are committed to listening to their feedback on their experience with Restless Development and improving the support we provide. In 2021, 333 young leaders shared their motivation of working with us and provided recommendations and suggestions to improve their experience.
Key findings:
- The most popular motivation for young leaders to volunteer with Restless Development is to lead change and have an impact (80%) and to increase their knowledge and understanding of development work (73%).
- The training provided by Restless Development has been consistently rated as excellent or good between 2019-2021, but there needs to be a focus on ensuring that young leaders feel safe whilst working with us.
- 97% of young leaders feel that Restless Development has supported them to develop as a leader.
- 99% of young leaders feel proud to volunteer with Restless Development and feel that their contributions are recognised and valued.
Recommendations and suggestions:
- Ensure continued commitment to increasing inclusivity to ensure that diverse young people are able to lead our work. This can be done by training staff on working with persons with disabilities; looking at disability inclusive budgeting and investing to make our hiring processes and infrastructure amenable for persons with disabilities.
- Adequate and fair compensation to young people for their time is important to ensure that they feel valued for the work they do.
- Continue to provide its young leaders with opportunities where they can raise awareness, mobilise communities, influence decision makers and build the skills of other young people.
- Give more responsibility to young leaders to support them in their leadership journey.
The progress against these recommendations will be shared with the results of the 2022 Annual Young Leaders survey later this year.
Learn the experience of young people working with Restless Development.
Read the Annual Leaders Survey Summary
