Young People Guided Preparation and Reflection Frameworks

Research shows that preparation and reflection are important aspects of youth social action, helping ensure young people and their communities generate impact from their activities and projects.

These Preparation and Reflection Frameworks provide some prompts you and your staff can use to guide young people through their youth social action. Some of the questions will be more and less relevant, depending on the sorts of youth social action taken.

You do not need to follow the Frameworks line by line. Rather, use them flexibly and in response to your young people’s needs.

Youth Social Action: Preparation Framework

Questions about…

Where in your community could you add value?
What do you care about? What do you want to change?

How do you feel about the issues facing your community?
Who else do they affect? How do they feel about them?
Which of these is a priority for you?

What can you do about this issue?
What knowledge and skills do you currently have to help address the issue?
What specific project or activity can you initiate to address this issue?

What other knowledge and skills will you need to tackle this issue?
How can you develop these?

How does this link to your wider learning in school/college?
How will your youth social action link to your wider learning in school/college?
How can you use your social action to make a positive impact in the world around you?
How can you use your youth social action so that it supports your future career?
How can you use your youth social action to find out more about the world of work?

How will your activity create change?
Who will benefit from your youth social action, and in what ways? How will you know?

What partners (including peers, community members, employers, and so on) will you work with?
What experiences and support do you want from these partnerships?
Do you have these relationships, or do you need to develop them? If so, how?

If you’re working in a team, what role/s will each member of your group undertake, so that you achieve your goals?
How will you ensure everyone who wants to be involved can be involved?
What support will you need to get what you want from the youth social action?

What challenges might you face?
What will you do about these?
How will you review and evaluate your progress? Where will you log this?

Download the guided preparation framework

Youth Social Action: Reflection Framework

Questions about…

How did you seek to add value in your community?
What was the issue you sought to address?

How did you prioritise which issue to focus on?
Did your feelings about this issue change during your project? How?
What new things did you learn about the issue?
How did other people’s feelings about this issue change during your project? How do you know?

How did you identify how to respond to this issue?
Which of your existing knowledge and skills did you need to address the issue?

What other knowledge and skills did you need to tackle the issue?
How did you develop these?
What skills did you develop that could be relevant to your future career?

What learning from school/college did you draw on to help you? How did you apply this learning in your project?
How will what you did be useful for further study or employment?
How has your understanding of your future career options and the world of work changed?
How could you continue your work and extend your impact?

How did your activity create change?
Who benefitted from your activity, and in what ways? How do you know?
How could you celebrate and share the impact from your activity with the cause/people you benefitted?

What partners (including peers, community members, employers, and so on) did you work with?
What experiences and support did you get from these partnerships?
How did working with these partners compare with your expectations?
What did you learn from the partners you worked with?

If you worked in a team, what role/s did each member of your group undertake, so that you achieved your goals?
What expected and unexpected difficulties came up when you worked with others on the project?
How did you overcome these challenges?
What else might have helped?

What did you do if things didn’t go as planned?
What other approaches could you have tried in order to address the issue?
What would have been the benefits and downsides of these approaches, in comparison with the approach you did take?

Download the guided reflection framework