We work within a well-established empowerment policy which is about encouraging and supporting young people to take as much control over their own lives and futures as circumstances allow ( and perhaps, try to work together to change those wider circumstances!). We do this by engaging young people in all the decision-making that impacts upon the strategic and day to day running of the Warren. We h
ave our weekly ‘parliament’, ‘The Thing’ (Viking for assembly) where policy and decisions about our activities are debated and voted upon by young people. We deliberately have an ‘open door’ policy (no membership requirement) so that we are open to all young people. We provide a range of services and activities, all of which have been agreed by young people over the years, such as counselling, café, childcare, Can Do Learning Programme, Health Beat project, arts projects, sports, especially 5 a side football, and our music project where we have lately launched a community record label, Warren Records, so far releasing 6 CDs of local talent (Got your copies?). We are keen to work in partnership with other agencies and have been key players in the development of projects such as Hull Young People’s Parliament, this being the beginning, we believe, of developing models of young people’s active citizenship in the city. We are a one-off local only organisation and proud to have worked with the city council since our beginning in developing a project which external evaluators commented,’ the Warren must be one of the most impressive young people’s empowerment projects in Europe’.
