Introduction
Two Students from St. Paul’s Academy in Dundee won Tayside Cancer Support £3000 through their hard work in the Youth and Philanthropy Initiative.
Tayside Cancer Support was contacted to invite us to attend St. Paul’s R C Academy’s Charities Fair on the 31st January which our chair Linda attended.
At the Fair Linda met lots of pupils, including the pupils above Maya & Oscar, they decided that afternoon to choose our charity to represent for their YPI project.
What is the Youth and Philanthropy Initiative?
The Youth and Philanthropy Initiative otherwise known as YPI is a powerful active citizenship programme intended to empower young people to make a difference in their communities while also developing a range of skills.
It was first introduced in 2008 by the wood foundation and so far has engaged more 310,000 young people throughout Scotland, resulting in £3.6m being donated to different charities!
YPI is the biggest independent initiative being delivered in Scottish education. Each school is responsible for directing a grant of £3000 to a local charity championed by its students and we were lucky enough to be chosen by two students from St. Paul’s Academy that represented us amazingly.
Why us?
At the beginning of February Linda returned to St. Paul’s to answer any questions needed for Maya & Oscars presentation, it was here the two shared that this project (representing our charity) meant a lot to them due to Cancer affecting them both personally.
They wanted to be able to represent a charity that helped those affected by cancer.
What did they do?
The two students met with one of our terminal clients, Mrs H. She spoke about the challenges of her terminal diagnosis and the impact it has had on her and her loved ones. In the emotional discussion she praised the therapies offered by Tayside Cancer Support as an amazing thing that “ordinary people like me couldn’t afford”. This meeting inspired the students for their presentation and our client was used as part of the presentation.
Maya & Oscar continued to keep regular contact with Linda leading up to their first presentation at the beginning of March. After presenting at the beginning of March we were informed they had made it to the final!
The final presentation was on the 27th of March. They gave out our Newmags to the Judges and displayed our Tayside Cancer Support banner. There were 8 finalists that presented, they were watched by the 6 judges as well as a whole year group of students that will be part of YPI next year.
The students started the presentation strongly by stating “cancer will affect one out of two of the people in this audience”. They asked the judges to write on word clouds they had given them what emotion came to mind when thinking about cancer, they wrote words like fear, anxious, scared. They both then displayed a word cloud from our Newsmag, showing how our therapies helped people containing words like hope and calm. They also shared our client Mrs H’s emotional story and how the therapies helped her.
After all Maya & Oscar’s hard work they came first out of the 8 finalists and won us £3000!
Tayside Cancer Support would like to give out a big thank you to Maya & Oscar and all the hard work they put into winning money for our charity. This money will go towards paying for our complimentary therapies as well as our counselling so we can continue to help clients like Mrs H.
