Young people shape what TRAIN is, and what the organisation will look like in the future. TRAIN is in contact with 350 young people in an average year and they are TRAIN’s biggest asset. We believe that programmes that are developed in partnership with young people are more likely to be effective at engaging them and, therefore, have a greater impact.

Encouraging young people in actively making decisions that affect them has increased the likelihood that the decisions will be accepted, adopted, and become part of their everyday lives.

In addition, empowering the young people of Didcot to identify and respond to community needs helps them become empathetic, reflective individuals, setting them on a course to potentially continue this important work in their future.

Over the past year young people have been attending trustee meetings, sitting on interviews panels for members of staff and volunteers, taken up work placements at TRAIN. 14 young people have completed an ILM Level 2 in Leadership and have been involved in community and social-action events.

Our young people are asked to evaluate each activity that we run. We also now undertake an annual evaluation which measures how effective TRAIN has been in helping them, and as a result we are more able to target our support for them. These results are used to formulate the forward direction of the charity and the quality of the work our youth workers bring to the young people they support.