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Ep 44. Ruth Marvel, CEO The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award: A vision for young people
96 Plays1 year ago
“Deceptively simple, but devastatingly effective”
This is how Ruth Marvel, Chief Executive of The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award in the UK, describes the Award.
The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award was started by His Royal Highness the late Prince Philip in 1956 to provide young men with development opportunities to acquire self-confidence, gain a sense of purpose and help them become well-rounded citizens. Today, The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award or DofE provides an experiential learning framework that is open to all young people age 14 to 24, supporting them to learn new skills, overcome obstacles, and build confidence and resilience.
Ruth shares how the organisation has changed over the years, and we explore their current strategy to enable one million young people to participate in the life-changing programmes, with particular focus on providing access to those who experience marginalisation.
With a third of young people in the UK leaving school feeling like they are failing, we talk about the current context for young people, and what skills, outside of formal education, they need to really thrive in today’s world.
Ruth also shares reflections on the discipline of leadership in the voluntary sector and how as leaders, we constantly need to question whether we are delivering our missions in the most effective way. Recorded June 2023.
Guest Biography
Ruth Marvel is the CEO of The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (DofE) in the UK. The DofE exists to help young people build a life-long belief in themselves, supporting them to take on their own challenges, follow their passions, and discover talents they never knew they had.
Ruth is passionate about social justice and she has a particular interest in advancing opportunities for young people, social innovation and the power of collaboration and design thinking to solve social problems. Since joining DofE in 2019, Ruth has led the development of a new organisational strategy which aims to give a million young people, especially the most marginalised, a life-changing DofE experience by 2026.
Before joining DofE, Ruth was Acting CEO at Girlguiding, which is the largest organisation of girls and young women in the UK and supports 400,000 young members to build their skills and confidence, have fun and be heard on the issues they care about. Prior to that, Ruth was Director of Strategy and Innovation at the disability charity Scope, where she led on organisational strategy, innovation and co-designing services with disabled people and their families. Ruth started her career as a campaigns officer at Scope, working to strengthen Disability Rights legislation.
Ruth is a Trustee of GoodGym, and a Fellow of the Clore Social Leadership Programme.
Links
https://www.dofe.org/
This is how Ruth Marvel, Chief Executive of The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award in the UK, describes the Award.
The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award was started by His Royal Highness the late Prince Philip in 1956 to provide young men with development opportunities to acquire self-confidence, gain a sense of purpose and help them become well-rounded citizens. Today, The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award or DofE provides an experiential learning framework that is open to all young people age 14 to 24, supporting them to learn new skills, overcome obstacles, and build confidence and resilience.
Ruth shares how the organisation has changed over the years, and we explore their current strategy to enable one million young people to participate in the life-changing programmes, with particular focus on providing access to those who experience marginalisation.
With a third of young people in the UK leaving school feeling like they are failing, we talk about the current context for young people, and what skills, outside of formal education, they need to really thrive in today’s world.
Ruth also shares reflections on the discipline of leadership in the voluntary sector and how as leaders, we constantly need to question whether we are delivering our missions in the most effective way. Recorded June 2023.
Guest Biography
Ruth Marvel is the CEO of The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (DofE) in the UK. The DofE exists to help young people build a life-long belief in themselves, supporting them to take on their own challenges, follow their passions, and discover talents they never knew they had.
Ruth is passionate about social justice and she has a particular interest in advancing opportunities for young people, social innovation and the power of collaboration and design thinking to solve social problems. Since joining DofE in 2019, Ruth has led the development of a new organisational strategy which aims to give a million young people, especially the most marginalised, a life-changing DofE experience by 2026.
Before joining DofE, Ruth was Acting CEO at Girlguiding, which is the largest organisation of girls and young women in the UK and supports 400,000 young members to build their skills and confidence, have fun and be heard on the issues they care about. Prior to that, Ruth was Director of Strategy and Innovation at the disability charity Scope, where she led on organisational strategy, innovation and co-designing services with disabled people and their families. Ruth started her career as a campaigns officer at Scope, working to strengthen Disability Rights legislation.
Ruth is a Trustee of GoodGym, and a Fellow of the Clore Social Leadership Programme.
Links
https://www.dofe.org/
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Transcript
Concerns in UK Education System
00:00:00
Speaker
The stat that just really jumps out for me is that a third of young people fail their GCSEs. A third. I mean, that's got to be.
00:00:10
Speaker
a wake-up call, I think. It's like we've designed a system that 33% of our young people aren't able to access. And one of the most joyful things about working at DV is I get to just talk positively about all the things that young people can do and their sort of innate value and the incredible sort of passion and capabilities that they have.
Introduction to the Charity CEO Podcast
00:00:39
Speaker
Welcome to an exciting new season of the Charity CEO podcast, where we bring you the stories and insights of remarkable charity leaders who are changing the world for the better. We talk to the people who run nonprofits, the movers and shakers who are driving positive change in this space, inspiring you to take bold action and make a difference.
00:00:58
Speaker
To all our listeners across the globe, I am thrilled to have you with us. We've received amazing feedback from listeners in over 42 countries, including the UK, US, Australia, Canada and India. Your support and engagement is what makes this community so special. To all of you who pour your hearts and souls into making the world a better place through your work in the charity and non-profit sectors, thank you. I'm Divya O'Connor and here's the show.
Ruth Marvel on Youth Development
00:01:26
Speaker
Deceptively simple but devastatingly effective. This is how Ruth Marvel, Chief Executive of the Duke of Edinburgh Award UK, describes the award. The Duke of Edinburgh Award was started by His Royal Highness the late Prince Philip in 1956 to provide young men with development opportunities to acquire self-confidence, gain a sense of purpose and help them become well-rounded citizens.
00:01:47
Speaker
Today, the Duke of Edinburgh Award, or DOV, provides an experiential learning framework that is open to all young people aged 14 to 24, supporting them to learn new skills, overcome obstacles, and build confidence and resilience. Ruth shares how the organisation has changed over the years. We also explored their current strategy to enable one million young people to participate in the life-changing programmes, with a particular focus on providing access to those who experience marginalisation.
Challenges Facing UK Youth
00:02:15
Speaker
With a third of young people in the UK leaving school feeling like they are failing, we talk about the current context for young people and what skills outside of formal education they need to really thrive in today's world. Ruth also shares reflections on the discipline of leadership in the voluntary sector and how as leaders we constantly need to question whether we are delivering our missions in the most effective way. Enjoy the conversation.
00:02:39
Speaker
This episode is sponsored by Society. Society is an executive search firm that partners with responsible businesses and purpose-driven organizations to strengthen diversity and inclusion across senior leadership and board appointments. As a certified B Corp, they believe that all organizations can have a positive social impact and that careers should have purpose and meaning. Society's goal is to change the world for the better, one appointment at a time.
00:03:06
Speaker
Visit their website society-search.com for further details. Now, on with the show. Hi Ruth, welcome to the Charity CEO podcast. It's great to have you with us today and I'm really looking forward to our conversation.
00:03:23
Speaker
Hi Divya, me too. Thanks for having me. So let's get started with our icebreaker questions. Okay. Question one. What was your first job? I think it was probably a paper round. I've been reflecting on this quite a lot because I did a lot of sort of part-time jobs as a teenager. I think it was a paper round. I think I was probably like 12 and a half and I think I possibly got largely paid in sweets by the newsagent.
00:03:47
Speaker
Question two, what would you say is your professional superpower? I'd say probably two
Ruth Marvel's Leadership Insights
00:03:53
Speaker
things. One, I'm good at seeing the bigger picture. I find it quite easy to sort of, you get lots of information, lots of stuff going on to be able to sort of step back and organize, I suppose, thinking and just to go, I think these are the key themes that we're looking at. That stood me in quite good stead over the years. And then I said the other one is that
00:04:15
Speaker
I'm generally pretty unflappable, so I'm quite calm and don't sort of panic very often. It's quite useful, particularly in the CEO world. Both absolute superpowers in being a charity chief executive. Question three. Give us three words that you would use to describe young people today. It's tough to only choose three. I would say
Perceptions of Young People
00:04:39
Speaker
resourceful, passionate,
00:04:44
Speaker
and underappreciated. Nice. And flipping the question to look through the other lens, can you give three words that you think the young people that you interact with might use to describe you? Oh, goodness. I think I hope what they'd say is a kind of cheerleader for young people, respectful and ambitious.
00:05:06
Speaker
And the final question is, if you had the opportunity to interview anyone in the world dead or alive, who would it be and what one question might you like to ask them?
Inspirations and Aspirations
00:05:17
Speaker
Oh, I don't have that many sort of celebrity crushes, for want of a better word, but I'd say probably Victoria Wood. She's sadly not with us anymore, because she was the kind of most
00:05:30
Speaker
incredibly sort of authentic and sort of funny and yet kind of fundamentally sort of kind entertainer, comedian. So I'd probably ask her something like kind of what's the secret to managing that balance between being funny but kind of respectful and kind with it?
00:05:50
Speaker
Interesting perspectives indeed.
Origins of the Duke of Edinburgh Award
00:05:54
Speaker
Ruth, you are the chief executive of the Duke of Edinburgh Award UK, more popular known to everyone as DOV. Tell us the origin story of the Duke of Edinburgh Award and what it is.
00:06:07
Speaker
like all kind of great charities, DOV has a great origin story. So the Duke of Edinburgh Award was founded by, surprise, surprise, the Duke of Edinburgh. So Prince Philip back in 1956,
00:06:21
Speaker
And it was a really kind of progressive act, I think, on his behalf. He wanted to do something to sort of support young people. He was a real passionate advocate for young people. And he was very inspired by a guy called Kurt Hahn, who was the head teacher at Gordonston School up in Scotland, where he was a student.
00:06:42
Speaker
And Kurt Hartman was a really interesting character. He was a sort of educational kind of philosopher. He came from Germany and left Germany to escape the Nazis and set up sort of Gordonston School shortly after that. Kurt Hartman had a sort of philosophy of education and he called it, I think, the sort of seven declines of youth or something kind of terrible.
00:07:03
Speaker
I think we talk about, we totally flip that over these days, but it was recognition that kind of young people, and DIV was originally sort of started for young men, but actually became co-ed very early on. It's quite unusual for kind of this sort of youth programs.
00:07:20
Speaker
And it was designed essentially to give young men something sort of purposeful and productive to do between leaving school at sort of 14 and then starting national service at 18. He was sort of concerned that there wasn't something clear and engaging that would help young people develop the sort of skills and moral compass and sort of ethical framework.
Structure of the Award Program
00:07:42
Speaker
And they'd just be sort of floating around bored with nothing to do. And
00:07:46
Speaker
The sort of original program was focused on things like developing your physical self. There was always a sort of community service kind of component to it. So it was very much about sort of developing and sort of honing yourself to be the best that you could be, but had a very practical kind of element to it. So it wasn't about sort of sitting down and learning things from a textbook. It was about sort of experiential
00:08:09
Speaker
learning. So yeah, the original programme set up in 1956, and then developed over the years, but the programme we run today is not far off, to be honest, the sort of original, we've had some sort of tweaks and changes along the way, as you might expect. But
00:08:24
Speaker
So it's effectively a program now at sort of three levels, bronze, silver and gold, which support young people to develop the kind of skills, capabilities and confidence that they're going to need in adult life. And it's very self-directed. So young people get to choose the activities they do in each of the different sections. And I often describe it as a bit like your sort of New Year's resolutions all kind of rolled into one. So there's a physical section sort of, so, you know, I want to get fitter.
00:08:51
Speaker
There's a skills section, you know, I want to keep learning and learn how to do something new. There's a volunteering section, which is all about kind of giving back and kind of, you know, putting your skills and talents to use for the wider community. And then there's probably the most iconic bit that everybody might be aware of is the expedition or the adventurous journey. So getting out into nature, putting yourself in unfamiliar situations and having to rely on your teammates to kind of help you conquer the hills and valleys and the challenges that you meet along the way.
00:09:21
Speaker
So i think taken together i often sort of describe it as being deceptively simple and yet devastatingly effective it's surprising how something is simple can have such a profound impact on your people's both sense of self and confidence in themselves.
00:09:39
Speaker
But also I think it puts young people in situations where they have to take sort of calculated risks, they have to work together as a team. So one of the important components of the expedition is young people do it themselves, sort of without adult engagement and involvement. So if things go wrong, they have to kind of work out what they're going to do.
00:09:57
Speaker
If the tent blows down, I have to work it out and put it back up again.
Encouraging Independence in Youth
00:10:00
Speaker
And I think these days, we don't give young people that many opportunities to be genuinely independent, to have to sort of manage things for themselves. There's a lot of talk of sort of helicopter parenting, and I think my sense is that our
00:10:15
Speaker
understanding and kind of awareness of risk has kind of reached such a point that actually, you know, there are lots of things that we consider too dangerous or too risky for young people to do. And I think DIV is a really important contributor in some ways to kind of helping to keep that space for young people.
00:10:32
Speaker
in a space in which actually you can take risks, you can be independent, you have to rely on yourself and your peers and not always have adults there to dive in and sort things out. And it's incredible, you know, what you learn when you're in those settings. Deceptively simple.
00:10:48
Speaker
but devastatingly effective. I love that description of the whole TV award, Ruth, and you're absolutely right. It's about helping young people be not just resilient, but actually become antifragile in the face of various challenges.
Royal Support for the Award
00:11:04
Speaker
So Prince Edward has stepped into his father's shoes effectively and has been involved with the organisation I know for a very long time and has recently been awarded the title of his Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh. So what is his role now?
00:11:20
Speaker
As you said, he's actually been involved with the award for a really long time. He's such a passionate supporter and he really did sort of pick up, I guess, the baton from his father in terms of kind of his both involvement and sort of passion for the award. So he's one of our trustees. He's also the chair of trustees for the International DV Award, which
00:11:39
Speaker
essentially overseas and licenses all of the organizations across the world that run DFU programs, including us in the UK. And I mean, he's an incredibly passionate supporter. So he supports us with all sorts of things. We were in Buckingham Palace three weeks ago, celebrating all of our Gold Award achievers. So we had, I think, 9,000 young people in Buckingham Palace across two days.
00:12:04
Speaker
And it was brilliant, just celebrating all the amazing things they've achieved and talking about, let's suppose, what the future holds. And now you've got these skills and capabilities, these things that you've done, and the things that you've proved to yourself what you're capable of. The world's your oyster. You can take these things and go and apply it to whatever you want to do. So Prince Edward was there hosting us all. He does all sorts of different things for us. He helps us with fundraising. He's a fantastic ambassador and spokesperson for the award.
00:12:34
Speaker
he's really taken on that mantle from Prince Philip in terms of that sort of belief in that sort of experiential education and the value of that for young people. So it's a fantastic sort of support for the award and obviously now he's got the Duke of Edinburgh title which is great.
Broader Youth Challenges
00:12:52
Speaker
So what an incredible experience that must have been for all of those 9,000 young people to be in Buckingham Palace in the gardens and meeting Prince Edward and celebrating their award and their achievements as well. Talking about the future, tell us a bit more about the broader context for young people in the UK today. I mean, you alluded there to
00:13:12
Speaker
the real purpose of education and how we are really equipping young people for the future. What are you seeing in terms of that context and trends? I think young people have faced a perfect storm of challenges over the past few years. I mean, not only did we have the COVID pandemic to contend with, which I think we can't underestimate the long-term impact of that experience on young people who were
00:13:40
Speaker
at this really formative moment in their development. I mean, to be honest, whether you were just going into infant school or whether you were in the sixth form, missing out on effectively two years worth of schooling, as well as that social and emotional development that people go through in that two-year period, I think is just fundamental. And I think we're seeing in some ways that the legacy of some of that in terms of
00:14:07
Speaker
increased levels of mental ill health amongst young people, anxiety is through the roof. We've got a million young people not in education, employment and training at the moment and youth unemployment is significantly higher than adult unemployment which has got to be a concern given that
00:14:22
Speaker
We are effectively the most, this is the most sort of educated generation like we've ever had. I mean, it feels like crisis upon crisis upon crisis. And if you know, we've had the cost of living, which we know has had a massive impact on dragging more people into poverty and the kind of the day to day stresses associated with not being able to know where the sort of next meal is coming from or not be able to afford that the sort of heating bills have a fundamental impact on young people's wellbeing.
00:14:49
Speaker
We're also seeing reports which to be honest were there before the pandemic but views from employers that young people are sort of leaving school and further in higher education without necessarily the core sort of skills and capabilities they need for work. I think the other sort of important context for this is that in broader macro terms I think
00:15:13
Speaker
It feels as though the social contract with young people has been broken. The complete disconnection now between cost of housing and wages is such that a lot of the things that previous generations have been able to sort of harness some stability from
00:15:31
Speaker
like the idea that you work hard and you can move up in your career and you can afford a house and you could make a decision about whether you might want to start a family. It feels like sort of all bets are off in some of those. We're seeing massive inequalities in terms of intergenerational wealth, both cost of living but also particularly I think cost of housing is taking up such an enormous proportion of young people's sort of disposable income. That sort of question about how do young people see and map out a kind of stable
00:16:00
Speaker
predictable future for themselves, I think is very difficult. So without my new sound, all doom and gloom about it, I think young people are in a really tough situation. And on top of that, since 2008, we've seen essentially about a billion pounds a year taken out of youth work. So defunded to the point where actually it's just not comparable to where we were a decade ago. And the consequences of that are young people are missing out on
00:16:29
Speaker
access to that trusted adult the kind of enrichment activities that we know are so fundamental like dv to helping people develop a sense of self to explore their passions and talents and interest to do that in a way that is safe and supported.
00:16:45
Speaker
And I think when you combine that with the kind of narrowing of the academic curriculum and the fact that there's very little space these days in terms of the school national curriculum for that kind of experiential learning for
00:17:00
Speaker
young people to develop the kinds of skills like teamwork, collaboration, prioritization, the problem solving, all the things that DfE does so well, there's not much space for that within the school day. And these are not things you can learn from a textbook, and they're not things that somebody can teach you standing in front of a class.
00:17:20
Speaker
So although there are kind of I think some really big challenges facing young people, I would really like to see, we're coming up to a general election, so I'd really like to see sort of all the major political parties articulate their vision for young people and the kinds of sort of support that young people should be able to expect from government to help them thrive.
Political Responsibility to Youth
00:17:39
Speaker
People talk kind of dramatically like about sort of lost generations and I do think that we have to take this really seriously. There's a range of very specific factors that have created this perfect storm for young people and it's going to take a concerted level of focus.
00:17:55
Speaker
and sort of prioritisation of young people's needs, I think, if we are going to do justice to this generation. And coming back to DOV and the support that you provide young people with facing all of these challenges, tell us a bit more Ruth about your strategy youth without limits and what you are seeking to achieve and your focus and priorities for the next couple of years.
00:18:16
Speaker
So, I mean, I guess that it's Heart Youth Without Limits is all about trying to extend the kind of opportunities that DIV offers to as many young people as possible. We reach about 30% of all 14-year-olds in the country with DIV, which is really exciting. But we're really mindful that these are the kinds of opportunities that some young people are kind of getting in spades and some young people are not getting at all.
00:18:39
Speaker
And I think particularly just in light of the context that we are operating in at the moment and all of the different challenges facing young people, the sort of opportunities for enrichment, for kind of exploring passions and interests that kind of are not serviced by the academic curriculum, being able to kind of learn by doing and
00:18:59
Speaker
are so fundamental. As I said, we've sort of squeezed all of that out of the school curriculum. So it sort of becomes false to us in some ways, as kind of voluntary sector organisations, to be able to provide the sort of infrastructure and that sort of enables this to happen and gives young people these life-changing transformative opportunities.
00:19:21
Speaker
So I guess at its heart Youth Without Limits is about expanding access both sort of to all young people so every young person is accessing some kind of developmental enrichment opportunities which reflect their sort of skills and interests and the context in which they're living.
00:19:36
Speaker
But also that we're making sure that we are doing everything we can to reach the most marginalised young people and the people for whom actually these opportunities are not easy to access. There are myriad of reasons for why this is harder for those young people to access. So we've got a real focus on reaching more young people with.
00:19:55
Speaker
disabilities and additional needs, reaching more young people from non-white British backgrounds and reaching, which is perhaps our toughest challenge, those young people living in poverty. So that essentially is the mission that we're on. We feel like we're making really good progress on that and we're having that conversation with government about how do we make sure that these opportunities are both available to everyone but that we understand the value
00:20:22
Speaker
and the importance of this and reframing our understanding of what education is into something that's much more holistic and kind of broad and balanced and focused on how do we develop fundamental human skills and attributes and capabilities that all young people have but for whom actually for many with our very narrow academic curriculum are just not being served at all.
Inclusivity in Education and Opportunities
00:20:44
Speaker
I mean the stat that just really jumps out for me is that a third of young people fail their GCSEs, a third
00:20:51
Speaker
Wow. I mean, that's got to be a wake up call. I think it's like we've designed a system that 33% of our young people aren't able to access. And one of the most joyful things about working at DV is I get to just talk positively about all the things that young people can do and their sort of innate value and the incredible sort of passion and capabilities that they have. I'd argue it's the best job in the voluntary sector. You get to be positive and meet amazing people all day. But
00:21:20
Speaker
That sense of how do we make sure that our education system is genuinely harnessing and enabling all of our young people to sort of fulfill their potential is recognising that people have a range of different skills and talents. We do appear to be failing quite a significant number of them in not giving them the kind of outlets and opportunities to really be able to show those. I don't think anyone should leave school at 16 feeling like they've failed. I think that's the reality at the moment.
00:21:49
Speaker
I agree with what you said earlier, Ruth, that there is a real need for voluntary sector organisations to come together and perhaps collaborate more to provide this holistic support and solutions that young people need to really thrive. How does DOV interface with other youth organisations or other charities in this space at the moment? And what more do you think needs to be done?
00:22:12
Speaker
I mean, we work really closely with the broader youth sector. And this year, actually, I'm the chair of what's called the Back Youth Alliance, which is a group of 12 charity sector youth organizations. And we're doing some really exciting work together, I think, and that sort of focus on collaboration on articulating a vision for young people.
00:22:31
Speaker
And working with young people to articulate that I think is absolutely what we need to do in terms of making sure that all of the different actors in this space that includes the formal education and government and sort of local authorities who have a statutory duty around youth work and supporting young people.
00:22:48
Speaker
we all need to collaborate effectively i think i often describe the sector is a bit like a kind of mosaic where all the tiles are particularly well sort of glued together and i see some of our task is try to turn that sort of jumble of bits into a beautiful fresco because i think that's the brilliance of the.
00:23:06
Speaker
voluntary sector is that you know that organizations meeting all sorts of different needs responding to the kind of diverse needs and aspirations of young people and we need everybody to be part of that picture because everybody has a sort of a part to play or a piece of the puzzle.
00:23:22
Speaker
The art is the kind of how do we stick all of that together to make sure that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and I'm feeling really optimistic actually at the moment. I think we're doing some really good sort of collaboration and cooperation and it's been great to see the government has launched its national youth guarantee in England which is
00:23:40
Speaker
essentially pledging to make sure that every young person has access to kind of regular out-of-school activities. But I suppose the pledge is simple. The reality of actually making that happen and making sure that genuinely every young person is getting access to these kinds of opportunities is a big task. But it feels like we're making positive progress in the right direction. A lot more to do, I think, to make that a reality.
00:24:05
Speaker
Ruth, you and I were chatting earlier about what you described as service of the mission versus service of the institution. And all of us who are leaders in the charity sector know that there is always a need to raise money and focus on the financial viability of our organizations whilst also delivering for our service users and beneficiaries.
Charity Leadership and Collaboration
00:24:25
Speaker
Can you share any learnings or wisdom that you've gained in your years of experience as to how you achieve that balance?
00:24:32
Speaker
It's about sort of being aware of that. Across my career, I've worked for three really well-established charities that all have a really interesting origin story and I've kind of been around for a long time. And I think that's one of the big disciplines of leadership in an established charitable organization is that sense of like really staying true and keeping the mission in mind, recognizing that what you do might need to change, but kind of why you're doing it has to remain
00:25:00
Speaker
consistent and we're always faced with a sort of never-ending, it seems, range of challenges. But I had the sort of privilege of talking to a lot of charity CEOs and I did a bit of research. I was part of the Claws Social Leadership Program quite early days. And I was really interested in how do organizations collaborate
00:25:19
Speaker
more effectively because i think that sense of competition within the voluntary sector and in some ways that your greatest strength can be our greatest sort of achilles heel i think sometimes is not allowed to most of the two sector organizations are set up by someone or a group of people with a really clear.
00:25:40
Speaker
Sense of sort of social justice they find an issue that they're really passionate about that kind of really exercises them and they throw all of that energy and passion and networks and they can end up being quite I suppose the we talk about sort of found a syndrome and you know in the vulture set so they can end up being quite of a sort of personal labor of love.
00:26:01
Speaker
And I think sometimes that can stand in the way of a really cold, hard, strategic look, actually, a bit like to my mosaic analogy. What part am I playing in the broader journey towards social justice? And how do you make sure that you stop frequently and pause and say, you know, are we still on the right track? Are we still doing what we are uniquely placed to do? And we all face those challenges around, you know, where's the funding coming from?
00:26:30
Speaker
the tendency to be distracted or have your head turned by opportunities that are not necessarily the right strategic ones, but come with funding or come with some sort of security attached to them, I think is perhaps the biggest challenge for charity sector leaders. If you're talking about change, leadership is about change. It's all about a change process. So when you're coming into a charity sector leadership role, you're trying to look at how do we
00:27:00
Speaker
Make sure that we're serving the mission like what needs to change to make us as effective and efficient in this space and i think the conversation about what do we do versus what does everybody else do.
00:27:18
Speaker
And how do we collaborate rather than compete is perhaps our kind of biggest challenge. I'm always struck by the fact that, you know, you see very few charitable organizations merging with each other, despite the fact that, you know, if you look at the Charity Commission, there are lots of organizations who have got almost identical missions and visions and purposes.
00:27:38
Speaker
And that takes us back to some of those origin issues, the passion, the focus. We do this in a particularly unique way and I think you have to go, do we? Is what we're offering unique in this space or are there other people doing something similar? In which case, what can we learn from them? Is there merit in us thinking about how we join this up more effectively?
00:27:58
Speaker
But it's difficult because I think as leaders, you spend a lot of your time worrying about the bottom line and checking your KPIs, and the tendency to get lost in the day-to-day of wanting to run a good quality service for the people that you exist to benefit is really, really important. But if you don't step back periodically and check yourself, check whether actually the progress that you're making or the things that you're spending your energies on are actually delivering benefit, it's quite easy to get lost
00:28:28
Speaker
There's plenty of organizations that can reflect on the fact that they had their wilderness years where the strategy wasn't clear enough and the sense of how is this actually benefiting people who we exist to help? If someone could do this better than us, then why wouldn't we support them to do that? I was also interested when I did my close social leadership research in this sort of idea of how big established organizations can work more effectively with kind of small startup organizations and that sense of creating a much more
00:28:58
Speaker
Interconnected network where basically everybody sort of did what they were good at rather than kind of organization sort of pretending they're good at things because it was more important to be able to kind of brand it as your own than it was to actually deliver the impact on the ground and I mean I make this sound a bit flippant and it's not intended to because it's not easy.
00:29:19
Speaker
But I'd say that that's something, as a sort of leader, we have a responsibility to our beneficiaries to make sure that we are doing that on a regular basis. I would love to see more in the way of mergers and partnerships and the kinds of things where you think, actually, that's a really strategic relationship that you're developing that has beneficiaries at its heart rather than the sort of survival or growth of the organization itself.
00:29:47
Speaker
That's such a critical discipline of charity leadership, as you say Ruth, what you do might need to change, but why you do it needs to remain consistent, which brings us back to the mission. And so it really is all about the mission and talking about passionate people and volunteers who set up organisations.
00:30:04
Speaker
in the first place who of course we love, otherwise we wouldn't have so many wonderful organizations in the sector. And the way I think about it is when an organization is set up, it's usually because there is a group of people who have a need that is not being served and a founder or somebody or a group of volunteers think, okay, we can serve this need in a particular way. And the question I like to ask is if that organization disappeared, would that need also disappear?
00:30:34
Speaker
Or would those groups of people or those beneficiaries be served elsewhere? And I think when we're talking about mergers and acquisitions, which are hugely resource intensive processes, which is one reason why I think charity leadership is perhaps a bit
00:30:50
Speaker
averse to going down that route. And maybe this is something that Claude could look at in terms of setting up a charity, you know, mergers and acquisitions resource and research center. I've often thought that that's something the sector could benefit from. But yeah, that's the question I always ask. If an organization disappears, would the group of beneficiaries be served elsewhere?
00:31:11
Speaker
Yeah, the so what question. Yeah. Yeah. If we weren't here, would somebody else be doing this? I think that's that sense. I mean, we increasingly, I think live in a world where we're seeing levels of need going up almost exponentially, particularly in the kind of context of sort of cost of living and, and
00:31:27
Speaker
I think it's a really interesting debate around what is the role of the voluntary sector. Is it to act as a safety net where government doesn't? Is it to augment and provide additional support and services that are outside the remit of the statutory sector?
00:31:45
Speaker
That sort of question, when I always found that particularly exercising when I worked for scope in disability terms, the sense of actually what's the responsibility of the state essentially to support and enable disabled people versus the role of charitable institutions, which feels like a very Victorian model almost of philanthropy. And then you end up in a space around who's deserving of support and who's not.
00:32:08
Speaker
I think that's why that role of the voluntary sector, as I said in terms of, we're about, I think at our heart, about social justice, about making sure that things are fair and equitable and that those who are weaker or more vulnerable or more poorly served or need additional support are not just left to fend for themselves. That feels like where the origins of charity came from, but
Role of Sectors in Social Justice
00:32:30
Speaker
Continuing that sort of conversation, I suppose, and challenging ourselves around actually where is the value that we're adding and who's actually responsibility should this be? What's the right relationship between government and the sort of charity and voluntary sector you'd hope that you could create? And the private sector, you know, you could hopefully create a perfect balance almost across all three in terms of the best ways to support. I think perhaps we don't have enough of that conversation anymore.
00:32:58
Speaker
And it goes back to that sort of idea of, I suppose, organizations, we're doing what we're doing because we've always done it. And what's most important is to stay afloat or to kind of keep growing. But I think, you know, the value of stepping back and considering what are we trying to achieve and how will we know when we get there, what's the sort of end game and
00:33:16
Speaker
really challenging ourselves to say are we doing the things that are most sort of useful and are going to kind of deliver the fundamental change that we're looking for as opposed to just putting a sticking plaster on a mess. That's the challenge for charity leaders and boards is to kind of keep that conversation live and front of mind and not get too distracted by the challenges of the day-to-day which will always
00:33:38
Speaker
be there and arguably have been there in even more significant numbers and more complex kind of challenges over the last few years. And I would argue it's all of our responsibilities because the problems are genuinely too big for it to sit in just one sector, one area, government or the charity sector, or volunteer support more broadly.
00:34:00
Speaker
And talking about volunteering, I was intrigued by a number on your website of 17 million, which I understand is the estimated total value of volunteering hours given last year. How did you arrive at that figure? Tell us how it breaks down.
00:34:15
Speaker
So it's quite a simple calculation but we calculate the number of hours that young people have given in terms of volunteering through their DME programmes every year and we times it by the minimum wage essentially for under 21s which effectively reflects the age profile of our participants. So it's a bit of a crude calculation but I think we do it because we want to sort of illustrate just
00:34:36
Speaker
how much time and effort is being put into communities, into kind of supporting peers by DIV participants. And as a way of illustrating that the value of volunteering, these are things that we wouldn't pay for necessarily, but kind of if you had to pay for them, even at the kind of like rock bottom level, the value of this is enormous.
Value of Volunteering in Youth Sector
00:34:57
Speaker
And I think it's trying to illustrate what the power and value of volunteering, and not just the sort of monetary terms, but I think the emotional and the contribution volunteering makes to kind of individual people's wellbeing, both those who are benefiting from the volunteering, but also those doing the volunteering is a best kept secret. And there's a real concern that we are losing some of the civic core is ageing.
00:35:24
Speaker
And we have a lot of people involved in volunteering at the moment who are kind of at the older end of the age spectrum. And I suppose I see D of E as being really fundamental in terms of developing that kind of next generation of volunteers, of giving young people experience of this at a really early age and encouraging them to sort of continue to build volunteering into their sort of day to day life.
00:35:46
Speaker
I mean, I'd say that all elements of the DV program are valuable, but I think we see that the volunteering component as one that can be genuinely transformational for young people, partly because in a lot of senses, in other cases, young people aren't used to sort of seeing themselves as having valuable skills and talents. They're often reliant on adults to sort of do things for them to kind of
00:36:08
Speaker
signpost. So volunteering can be a really powerful experience in terms of saying I have got something valuable to offer and to see the benefit of that, to see if you spend time with an older person. If you go and help out your local food bank, you run a sports session for kids in primary school or help someone with their reading. That kind of value exchange, the idea that I've got something
00:36:31
Speaker
valuable to offer and that it's really appreciated by somebody else I think is an incredibly powerful experience and one that hopefully leads young people who participate in Diavita to want to continue to do that because volunteering is a fundamental
00:36:47
Speaker
I think strength of the UK, we really need to make sure that we are supporting and nurturing both the sort of infrastructure that supports people to be able to volunteer but positions it as something that kind of we would want everybody to participate in, that everybody's got something useful to contribute and particularly the age profile of volunteers at the moment should be is real cause for concern that we're not replacing essentially
00:37:13
Speaker
those people and the impact of that could be quite catastrophic. When you look at the things like the response to the COVID sort of volunteering drive, I mean the numbers of people who want to help, who want to be involved is huge. Working out how do we create the sort of infrastructure and mechanisms to mean that we make it as easy as possible for people to find something to do
00:37:32
Speaker
which sort of matches their interests and skills and the time that they have available. It needs to be a sort of priority for the whole sector because most of us are reliant in one form or another on volunteering and unpaid support from a whole range of different people with a whole range of different skills. And it's one of the things I think that makes us both special but particularly sort of dynamic and authentic in terms of the way that we do things.
00:37:53
Speaker
Yes, and as you mentioned earlier, with one billion of funding taken out of the youth sector, the sector would not be able to operate and deliver for young people without so many brilliant volunteers. Absolutely. And one of the things I was really interested in, as I was a bit geeky and read our Royal Charter at DV, and one of the things I was really interested to note, which I think is, again, a sign of how progressive the vision was for DV, is that one of the aims of the organisation is to essentially engage and support and encourage adults
00:38:22
Speaker
to basically give their time and skills and talent to support the development of young people. And so I see that very much as part and parcel of our mission is obviously we're very focused on giving young people brilliant experiences, but we couldn't do that without this army of amazing volunteers who just care about young people, who want young people to have these fantastic
00:38:43
Speaker
experiences and give up huge amounts of time and make levels of discretionary effort and build the relationships with young people that help young people to feel seen and heard and valued as individuals.
00:38:58
Speaker
So that sense of how do we continue to nurture and support adults to give back and to provide the infrastructure through which lots and lots of young people can thrive is absolutely crucial. And I think we face quite a lot of challenges as a sector in terms of...
00:39:14
Speaker
How do we balance things like safeguarding and risk and health and safety with the desire to want to harness the kind of time and goodwill and skills as wide a group of people as possible to help us realise these ambitions for young people?
00:39:31
Speaker
Ruth, I always love hearing about people's personal journeys and where their backgrounds or motivations have actually shaped where they are today.
Ruth Marvel's Career and Advice
00:39:42
Speaker
So tell us about what has led you to where you are today. I always had a really strong sense of social justice as a kid.
00:39:51
Speaker
And I would always be really aware, I think, when I saw things, particularly at school, when I saw things that I just thought weren't right. I mean, it might have been, I think it probably, I probably wasn't alone in experiencing the school system as sometimes having biases within it, people making assumptions about people and what they were going to be capable and what they would aspire to be. And I found that very, very enraging as a child.
00:40:16
Speaker
And I would often find myself standing up for kids that just felt weren't being treated fairly and were being sort of humiliated or undermined or marginalized by the people who were there who were supposed to be there to educate and inspire them. And so I think I kind of always had this strong sort of idea that I wanted to do something with my life and through work that was meaningful and purposeful and that made a difference.
00:40:39
Speaker
But interestingly, I had absolutely no idea how I was going to do that. I think the idea of working for a charity was never even mentioned. Even at university, it was a bit like, well, if you want to do that, you'd have to go volunteer. And I remember a guy at school, I said, oh, I'm going to work for a charity. I think I was probably about 14, 15. And he just went, no, you're not.
00:41:01
Speaker
And I thought, you know what, I'm going to show you. And I'd like to think I kind of did. I can't remember his name, but kind of. If I could, I might try and find him on Facebook and say, see, do it after all. That's been my role motivation. I really enjoy, I mean, I love the variety of my job. And the great thing about charity sector is there's always another problem to be solved somewhere. And quite a formative experience for me was I did a sabbatical at my university for the student union. So I sort of took a year out in the middle of my degree to go and work for the student union.
00:41:30
Speaker
And I mean, I had the best year, but I think it's fair to say we were completely clueless. We were running this sort of organization without any actual experience or kind of guidance, really, about how you were supposed to do that. I learnt so much, and I suppose that feels like it's been a sort of theme of my career, is I sort of feel like, you know, in the vodges, you actually have to teach yourself everything, or kind of find some people who are willing to share their wisdom and experience, as opposed to someone sort of taking you to one side and saying, this is how you do these things.
00:41:56
Speaker
I'm very curious as a person and I like to learn new things a lot. But yeah, that sort of sabbatical experience was I think really formative for me in terms of partly it comes back to that almost like experiential learning, you just got dropped in the deep end basically and sort of told to get on with it. And I really enjoyed and sort of relished doing that. So I think that really informed my approach to work, which is kind of, you know, I'm always kind of looking for a new challenge or trying to do something that's a bit beyond my comfort zone.
00:42:24
Speaker
And off the back of that sort of experience, I think that's what landed in my first job as a campaigns officer at Scope, which I absolutely loved and worked on, you know, all the sort of equalities legislation and the kind of genuine civil rights, I suppose, the sort of underpinning of civil rights for disabled people. I found it sort of intellectually fascinating and realising that actually we were so far behind in terms of just disabled people being able to have
00:42:50
Speaker
rights and freedoms that other citizens took for granted. But I mean, that was a job that I absolutely no idea that existed. I didn't know you could go and do that job for a charity. And so it feels like that was a really important step for me open to whole world.
00:43:07
Speaker
And from there, I've done all sorts of like really interesting things and particularly in that sort of policy and sort of research and innovation space. And then getting to be a CEO, I feel like is, I was a bit trepidatious about being a CEO. I have to say it took me quite a while to sort of decide to put my hat in the ring, I suppose, but I'm actually
00:43:24
Speaker
I'm quite pleased I took the time because I think I felt like by the time I took on the DIV job, I had a really strong set of skills that felt I could be really confident. And I think, you know, reflection, having joined DIV just before the pandemic started, sort of November 2019, I feel like having that sense of confidence and focus and positivity
00:43:47
Speaker
was really important in terms of helping, I suppose, carry people through that really difficult experience. At a time when things are so uncertain and there's so many things sort of up in the air, so much of normal life has been completely upended. What leaders need to offer is that sense of some stability and focus and order and clarity of purpose to help ground people in what is otherwise, you know, an incredibly difficult and destabilizing sort of dislocating kind of time.
00:44:17
Speaker
And looking back on your leadership journey, Ruth, perhaps even harking back to your days at the Student Union, is there any advice that you would give to yourself on day one of stepping into that leadership role? Looking back, I'd say try not to do quite so many things. I feel like I've honed that skill over the years, but I think probably anyone who knows me would probably give
00:44:39
Speaker
the same feedback. I feel like I'm sort of very ambitious in terms of I want to do quite a lot of things and I am careful now to surround myself with people who are also really good at planning and the kind of saying this is actually going to take quite a lot longer than you think it's going to take and you know we probably can't do all of these things by the end of next week. So that's definitely one lesson. I think my overall reflection on my leadership journey is that what I did and what I'd always do I'd do again is that if an opportunity presents itself take it.
00:45:08
Speaker
I'm quite a big believer in serendipity, I suppose. Opportunities arise and come up all the time, and there's two schools of thought. You can worry about it and think about it and perhaps over-analyse it, or you can just go, why not give it a go? What have we got to lose? I think in some ways that embodies that spirit of DIV quite well as well. If you don't try it, how do you know you're not going to love it? I love that. Learn by doing and just take the opportunity.
00:45:32
Speaker
Ruth, it's been so great chatting with you today and as we are coming to a close, give us one final reflection or thought. What is one thing you would like listeners to take away from this conversation?
Importance of the Voluntary Sector
00:45:44
Speaker
I would say that
00:45:47
Speaker
For all the trials and tribulations I think we go through, there is something fundamentally amazing about the voluntary sector. Its passion, its dynamism, its ability when it's really cooking on gas to pinpoint the key things that need to change, the things that we need to challenge and overturn for
00:46:07
Speaker
in order to achieve the sort of progress that we need as a society. So I would just say, continue to guard the flame of that, despite all of the sort of trials and tribulations that come your way, because we have something unique and special and when we get it right, the impact we can have is extraordinary. Ruth Marvel, thank you very much for being a guest on the show. Thanks, Divya.
00:46:34
Speaker
And that's a wrap on another inspiring episode of the Charity CEO podcast. I hope you found the conversation thought-provoking and uplifting. I certainly did. If you enjoyed the episode, we'd be thrilled if you could share the joy by leaving us a review on your favourite podcast platform. Tag us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram. We'd love hearing from our listeners.
00:46:54
Speaker
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