My time at Young Manchester by Claire Muhlawako Madzura

When I found out that I’d be working for Young Manchester, I was incredibly excited! Last year, I interviewed some of the young staff about their placed-based social action for #iwill’s film, In My Hometown. Not only did I get to hear about the transformative work from pioneers driving change, I had the privilege of living in it, breathing it in and directly benefiting from the partnerships that Young Manchester nurtures.

So what have I learnt? Here are three things I have really appreciated during my time with Young Manchester:

The value of team development

Being a part of a small team, one thing that I really appreciated was how well the Young Manchester team knew each other's strengths and weaknesses. The person who was the best at a particular skill would take the time to show whoever needed assistance how they would approach the task, rather than simply doing it for them. This gave time and space for professional development and it was really refreshing to see how each member of the team valued passing on their expertise to others. This was particularly useful whilst planning the National Young People & Place Conference.

Manchester will always have my heart

When you’ve lived in a particular place for such a long time, it can be easy to only interact with the same areas. Through my research, I had the privilege of speaking to youth workers from all over the city, delivering in areas whose names I didn’t recognise to the most close-knit neighbourhoods of Manchester. I was warmly invited to learn about how social action has transformed these communities and each time, I promised myself that I would do them justice in the evaluation that I would come to write.

The true power of place-based partnerships

Partnerships are the key to unlocking our cities and if you want to learn about what this really looks like, you can read Sharing Power In A Place, the report that I wrote that illustrates Young Manchester and our city’s most vulnerable experience of the impact of partnerships in a place.

I hope that the evaluation will encourage more organisations to commit to place-based partnerships and bring about more investment into the socio-economically deprived areas of Manchester.

Written by Claire Muhlawako Madzura