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Ep 4. Charlotte Hill OBE (Part 1), Executive Director, BBC Children in Need: Pandemic impact on young people and the power of collective action - #iwill Campaign
68 Plays4 years ago
“If we can get young people becoming Trustees and volunteers as young people, that’s when they form habits, and so they will then be volunteers and fundraisers and Trustees ... for the rest of their lives ... So it’s a great investment in our society more broadly and in civil society if we can get them engaged at a young age.”
My guest this episode is Charlotte Hill, the founding CEO of Step Up To Serve.
In Part 1 of our conversation, Charlotte and I talk about her current role, on secondment, as Executive Director for Children and Young People with the BBC’s Children in Need. There she is co-ordinating the COVID-19 funding response and developing a longer term strategy for collaboration, in the children and young people funding space.
Charlotte reflects on her journey with Step Up To Serve, its achievements and the intricacies of running a time-limited collective impact project. We discuss the particular challenges for young people in the current crisis, and how we must engage young people, in helping to think through what the ‘new normal’ should be, in order to build back a stronger civil society.
This episode was recorded in September 2020, via Skype.
Guest Biography
Charlotte Hill became Chief Executive of Step Up To Serve in 2014 at the start of the #iwill Campaign. Prior to that she had been CEO of UK Youth. She is currently on secondment to BBC Children In Need, but will return to Step Up To Serve for the final months before the time-limited organisation closes its doors at the end of 2020.
Charlotte started her career working in Parliament for the Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman QC MP. She then moved to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) as their Parliamentary Advisor. Charlotte has also worked with children’s charities in Australia and Cambodia.
Charlotte was awarded an OBE for services to young people in the 2020 New Year’s Honours List.
Links
https://www.iwill.org.uk/
My guest this episode is Charlotte Hill, the founding CEO of Step Up To Serve.
In Part 1 of our conversation, Charlotte and I talk about her current role, on secondment, as Executive Director for Children and Young People with the BBC’s Children in Need. There she is co-ordinating the COVID-19 funding response and developing a longer term strategy for collaboration, in the children and young people funding space.
Charlotte reflects on her journey with Step Up To Serve, its achievements and the intricacies of running a time-limited collective impact project. We discuss the particular challenges for young people in the current crisis, and how we must engage young people, in helping to think through what the ‘new normal’ should be, in order to build back a stronger civil society.
This episode was recorded in September 2020, via Skype.
Guest Biography
Charlotte Hill became Chief Executive of Step Up To Serve in 2014 at the start of the #iwill Campaign. Prior to that she had been CEO of UK Youth. She is currently on secondment to BBC Children In Need, but will return to Step Up To Serve for the final months before the time-limited organisation closes its doors at the end of 2020.
Charlotte started her career working in Parliament for the Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman QC MP. She then moved to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) as their Parliamentary Advisor. Charlotte has also worked with children’s charities in Australia and Cambodia.
Charlotte was awarded an OBE for services to young people in the 2020 New Year’s Honours List.
Links
https://www.iwill.org.uk/
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Charity CEO Podcast, the podcast for charity leaders by charity leaders, with candid, meaningful conversations that really get beneath the surface of issues. This show aims to inspire, inform and deliver practical insights on the challenges facing charity leaders today, for the benefit of leaders across the sector and for those who care about the important work of charities.
Meet Charlotte Hill
00:00:33
Speaker
I'm your host, Divya O'Connor, and each episode I will be interviewing a charity chief executive who will share with us their insights, knowledge and expert opinion on a particular topic or area of expertise.
00:00:44
Speaker
My guest today is the amazing Charlotte Hill founding CEO of Step Up to Serve.
COVID-19 Response Leadership
00:00:50
Speaker
In part one of our conversation, Charlotte and I talk about her current role on Secondment as Executive Director for Children and Young People with the BBC's Children in Need, where she's coordinating the COVID-19 funding response and developing a longer term strategy for collaboration in the children and young people funding space.
00:01:11
Speaker
Charlotte reflects on her journey with Step Up to Serve, its achievements and the intricacies of running a time-limited collective impact project.
Impact on Youth & New Normal
00:01:19
Speaker
We discuss the impact of the current crisis on young people and how we must engage young people in helping to think through what the new normal should be in order to build back a stronger civil society. I hope you enjoyed the show. Hi, Charlotte. Welcome to the show. So lovely to see you.
00:01:38
Speaker
And it's lovely to see you too. Thank you very much for having me. So our regular listeners will know that we normally start off the show with an ice break around. And this is just about 60 seconds of some lighthearted personal questions to enable our listeners to get to know you a little bit and for us to have a little bit of fun. So if you're ready, Charlotte. I'm ready. I'm intrigued by what you're going to ask. Ooh, excellent. I'll just set our 60 second timer and we can kick off.
00:02:07
Speaker
What would you say is your professional superpower? Oh, endless enthusiasm. What is the superpower you wish you had? Oh, lots more charm. I'm sure you don't need more charm, Colin. You're extremely charming. What was your first dance song at your wedding? Oh, God, isn't it awful? I've forgotten its name. Elbow.
00:02:35
Speaker
I can't remember the name of the song. I think we have time for one more question. What's the naughtiest thing you did at school? Oh God, I mean, I was really naughty at school, loads of naughty things. Well, I'm going to say bunking off just because it's the
00:02:59
Speaker
Yeah. Excellent. And I do have a bonus question that I like to ask all guests. So if you could interview anyone in the world dead or alive, and you could ask them one question, who would it be? And what would you like to ask? Anyone dead or alive? Wow. Well, this is a very random
00:03:22
Speaker
person but I would like to meet Dolly Parton who is one of my all-time heroes and has done so many amazing things and just ask her like what her inspiration was for she's given away I think it's over two billion books now with her fortune she's given away to children all across the world so I've always wanted to ask her about it we get delivered a book every month for each of my kids and she does this for kids all over the world it's amazing. Didn't know that.
00:03:51
Speaker
Yeah, she's literally the most amazing woman who's given all her money away that she's made by trying to get people kids to read. So I'd want to ask her about like what inspired her to do it and how she's yeah, how she's gone about doing it. Wow, that's lovely. Well, I should be ordering some Dolly Parton books for my own kids now that I've read about this. It is called the Imagination Library by Dolly Parton. It's absolutely brilliant, honestly. Oh, wow. The Imagination Library. I love that. Yeah, she's amazing woman.
00:04:19
Speaker
So Charlotte, to now transition into our main discussion for today. You have been the long-standing and founding CEO of the charity Step Up To Serve, which we will come on to talk about later. But I'd like to start off by chatting about your current role. You recently returned from maternity leave and are on secondment with the BBC Children Need as their executive director for children and young people.
00:04:46
Speaker
And when we were preparing for this podcast and I asked you what this role entails, I loved the description you gave. And I'm going to quote from your email here. You said that you were a floating resource working across founders and government.
00:05:02
Speaker
to pull together a COVID-19 response for children and young people whilst running a team of 60 people within children need to distribute their funding and all done from your bedroom with a baby and a toddler underfoot. So Charlotte, tell us how this role came about and what you're doing there.
Role at BBC & Funding Strategies
00:05:20
Speaker
I was in the very strange position of, as you say, being on maternity leave with my second baby when the lockdown hit and
00:05:27
Speaker
have an absolutely brilliant woman, Dr. Rania Miranda, who had become chief exec while I was on maternity leave and had also covered my maternity leave first time around. And she was doing an absolutely amazing job. So I was in a lucky position that I could speak to my board and say, look, a global pandemic has just hit. I'd really like to explore if there's another
00:05:47
Speaker
place I could be useful if you're happy to release me. So I sort of called around a few different people I knew and work around the kind of funding response to COVID-19 for children and young people was an area where there was clearly a need for some
00:06:01
Speaker
coordination and some work and also Children in Need were doing The Big Night In which was a big fundraiser so it was really a kind of a conversation with Simon Antrobus who's the brilliant Chief Exec at Children in Need and some other funders that made me kind of just yeah go across to Children in Need initially for three months and actually I'm going to stay there for six months to do a COVID-19 response piece of work which has been fascinating
00:06:27
Speaker
But yeah, full on and particularly with when I started a seven month old and a two year old. So yeah, pretty, pretty full on. Yes, I can imagine that. So pulling together a COVID-19 response for children and young people sounds like a fascinating piece of work indeed. So can you tell us more about how this strategy is shaping up and what work is being done?
00:06:57
Speaker
In a nutshell, it's two things. One is pulling together a group of funders, including governments across the four nations and independent funders to look at what is their vision for children and young people coming out of COVID-19. And then what's the strategy that sits beneath that in terms of funding? And then what are the ways that funders can collaborate and work together rather than individually to kind of drive and fund that strategy?
00:07:24
Speaker
So we've set up a whole series of subgroups where funders come together around areas of shared interest. And it's as much about kind of sharing insight and learning and planning together. And then it is also around sometimes around funding together. But what we've also been doing is consulting the sector collectively, and also consulting children and young people collectively. So I guess it's now being baked in as a much longer term thing than just a COVID response, but it's
00:07:51
Speaker
Just looking at actually how can funders work collectively, given that there are so many really significant challenges facing children and young people as a result of COVID-19, no one funder is going to be able to solve them on their own. So it's effectively trying to do a collective impact approach to funding, quite similar to the collective impact approach around I Will and use social action that we've been driving with the I Will campaign, but it's specifically with funders. And it's also looking at how
00:08:20
Speaker
we don't over-consult the sector. So lots of funders were wanting to go out and ask probably very similar questions to very similar people. So it's also around how do we do that stuff collectively. And the hope is, is longer term and long after I'll be gone from here, is this is now set up as a kind of a long-term ongoing way that people work together. And then the other part of the role that has been actually then also about getting emergency COVID response funding out the door. So there's been the funding from the big night in,
00:08:47
Speaker
which BBC Children in Need and Comic Relief did together. There's also been some funding from government. There's been funding with these futures. So there's been a range of different kind of pooled funds that's also been about getting that money out the door and during the emergency period. So I guess they're slightly two different focuses. There's the focus on getting money out the door during the emergency period. And then there's the focus on the longer term, how to funders work collaboratively in the children, young people funding space.
Challenges for Youth Support Post-COVID
00:09:15
Speaker
So can you tell us a bit more what you think has been the impact of the pandemic on young people? We keep hearing on the news that young people are perhaps less susceptible to COVID-19. And I don't know if you can talk us through some of the common misconceptions around this and what are the big challenges for young people in the current context.
00:09:36
Speaker
There's effectively three big things that have happened. One is those young people who are already facing challenges, whatever those challenges were, whether it's poverty or not doing well at school or mental health challenges or whatever, their challenges have got more significant. It's a bit like they've been under a microscope in Covid-19. There's then the second thing, which is that the group of young people facing challenges has got bigger.
00:09:59
Speaker
because lots of other young people are now facing challenges as a result of Covid-19. And then the third bit is that those organisations set up to support young people are also in a crisis. They're in a funding crisis, they're having to furlough staff when there's massive demand and so on. So you've got a bit of a perfect storm, which is it's worse for young people and the people who are set up to support them are also in crisis.
00:10:25
Speaker
I think one of the things that's been incredibly hard for children and young people has been that on the face of it, they are less susceptible to getting the, you know, they're not in the most vulnerable group as the elderly, yet they've had to make an absolutely huge amount of sacrifice during this pandemic.
00:10:40
Speaker
So for lots of them, obviously they've had to step away from their education for some months. It's had a big educational impact particularly on those from the poorer backgrounds, so that's been incredibly challenging. Obviously there's been a big digital divide between those who are in more affluent homes where they've got devices, they've got the internet, they've got data and all those things so they can access education.
00:11:02
Speaker
versus those who might not have a computer, might not have a laptop, might not have data, might not have the internet, might not have space in their home to do work, might be in, you know, overcrowded accommodation, might not have parents who have got jobs, you know, at the moment because of
00:11:18
Speaker
the recession. So lots of young people have had all sorts of really significant challenges, lots of challenges for mental health. Some young people obviously are struggling because of anxiety for all sorts of different reasons during the pandemic. Lots of young people really concerned about the loss of career progression or transitions into college or university.
00:11:40
Speaker
you know, the loss of potential jobs in the future. I mean, the listed endless has been absolutely huge impact on children and young people in all sorts of ways. And I guess, you know, the next few years are going to be tough for all of us. It's youth unemployment that usually bears the brunt in a lot of these kind of recessions. So I think it's going to be a really tough time for young people.
00:12:01
Speaker
Yes, indeed. And I think that actually gives us a nice segue into talking about Step Up to Serve and your journey with that organization, which is very much focused on youth social action. So I know you involved in setting up the charity back in 2013, and that since then, the organization has really gone on to achieve some incredible things.
Origin of Step Up to Serve
00:12:23
Speaker
You have over a thousand organizations engaged with the mission,
00:12:28
Speaker
over 70 million pounds has been deployed for youth social action and 500 million pounds of government funding has been secured for youth services. So tell us the origin story of Step Up to Serve and what were you looking to do and achieve when you first set it up?
00:12:45
Speaker
Well, first of all, it has been the most amazing organization to be part of. I've been felt really fortunate. But I have to say, I stand on the shoulders of giants because two absolutely brilliant women, Dame Julia Clevedon and Amanda Jordan, did a review for the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, which looked at what were the barriers that were stopping young people playing an active part in their communities.
00:13:07
Speaker
And I was then Chief Exec at UK Youth, and I was on their kind of advisory group as they were doing this review. And it was their review that led to the idea of the campaign. So they were the two absolutely brilliant women who did all of the kind of groundwork, speaking to lots of different sectors, to the education sector, to the employment sector, to the the voluntary sector, to businesses, to faith communities, many others.
00:13:30
Speaker
that basically unearthed the whole series of challenges and then came up with this idea that it would be great to have a kind of time limited campaign that tried to address those challenges. So having been on the advisory group during that review, you know, I was then
00:13:45
Speaker
after a very persuasive conversation with Julia Clevedon, who can persuade anyone to do anything, that was convinced to go in and run it. So yeah, set it up under the patronage of the Prince of Wales, who has been an amazingly supportive patron and hugely brilliant, inspiring guy to work with. And really visionary around this stuff has been for decades saying that young people, you know, could be doing so much more in society.
00:14:09
Speaker
So yeah, that was where the idea for it all came. And so yeah, came across and then set up the organisation and the charity, created a board of trustees under the brilliant leadership of General Sinek Parker and a brilliant team who have always been a really small team. We made a commitment from the beginning that we would only remain a small core lean team.
00:14:30
Speaker
And we bring different people in on some comments and things as needed. But yeah, we would we were committed to never becoming a delivery organization. We wanted to make sure we remained small. It was all about how we enabled others to do more. And if we were doing the doing ourselves, there was something wrong because we won't exist after the end of 2020 because we're time limited.
00:14:48
Speaker
So it's always been about how do we basically run a collective impact project so that others are engaged and persuaded to do more and really bake this in and embed it into their work. So it has been a fascinating project doing something time limited and working in ways that I think are really different than if you're running a long standing organization.
00:15:09
Speaker
My previous chief exec role was at UK Youth, and I took over there when the organisation was 100 years old. So, you know, I'd come from running a really well-established organisation, and it's a very different thing, running something you know you're going to close down. So, yeah, it's been fascinating. And the most inspiring part of all of it has been the Eyewell Ambassadors, who are a collection of nearly 300 now young people aged between 10 and 20 who are doing amazing things in their communities
00:15:38
Speaker
all over the UK and that they are the absolute inspiration you know and the thing that makes going to work every day great fun and actually the thing I've hugely missed now I'm on to comment is the contact with the Iowa Ambassadors all the time.
00:15:51
Speaker
Yes, I know Dame Julia Clevedon and indeed Prince Charles from when I was working at the Princess Charities. So yes, I'm sure she twisted your arm and there was no saying no. But what a brilliant opportunity and what an amazing set of people to work with.
00:16:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's been amazing. And yeah, Julia can, you know, sell ice to Eskimos. Yeah, so inspirational. I'm curious to understand a bit more about being a time limited organization.
Running a Time-Limited Campaign
00:16:20
Speaker
And I know you said that Step Up to Serve is going to end this year at the end of 2020.
00:16:26
Speaker
Talk to us a bit more about what that has meant and how it was different as you sort of alluded to to your previous organisation and also do you feel that you have actually achieved everything that you set out to? So I think there's something around when you set a time limit and some goals
00:16:42
Speaker
by which you want to achieve things. It does mean you have to work at an incredibly different pace. So each year we decided because we had a kind of a seven year window, we would, after the kind of first couple of setup years of getting it established and building a strategy that we'd have a kind of a theme for each year to try and drive momentum and bring different sectors in. And it means that effectively you've got a year to really engage a sector
00:17:08
Speaker
get them built up into what they're doing, build the momentum around it so that they can continue. So there's something around the pace at which you work, which is
00:17:17
Speaker
you know, fast and I love because it just means you're constantly on the go. There's something around setting very clear goals that I think keeps people really motivated because you've set a clear set of goals by the end of 2020 about what you want to achieve. I think there's something really great about saying to people, look, here's your part in achieving this goal. And you might feel like your part is only, you know, but actually you're part of this big collective. And I think that's the other thing that's quite powerful about it.
00:17:42
Speaker
is people feel like they're part of something, a campaign, a movement, and that's a really powerful energiser for people and organisations to be part of. And I mean, there's all sorts of other things. I do think also it makes you remain really focused. I think you can probably have a bit of mission drift sometimes in other organisations.
00:18:00
Speaker
whereas when you've got a very clear set of goals in a very finite period of time in which to deliver them you haven't got time to drift off and actually one of the things our board have been very good at is trying to keep us really focused on what we're trying to achieve and to the part of your question around have we achieved everything we wanted to sadly no we set really ambitious goals at the beginning knowing that some of them we wouldn't reach but knowing that if we didn't set really ambitious goals we wouldn't
00:18:25
Speaker
stretch ourselves as much as we possibly could. So a lot of the work that the team have been doing in the last couple of years has been all about how do we make sure we've got very clear legacy plans in place so that the work can continue with the organisations who are engaged with the campaign driving it on. So there is a plan that, you know, the key elements of the work will continue but through others when Step Up to Serve closes.
00:18:48
Speaker
So I think that's always been part of the plan was that though we haven't achieved everything and for me the thing I'm most disappointed that we haven't achieved and that we'd aimed for at the beginning was closing the socio-economic gap. So young people from poorer backgrounds are less likely to participate than those from more affluent backgrounds
00:19:07
Speaker
and there were points where we saw that closing but actually in the last couple of years we've not seen it continue to close for all sorts of reasons so that for me is the piece of work I really hope that people continue to drive because as I've said all of these challenges around Covid are hitting those from the poorer backgrounds more than those from the more affluent backgrounds so they need the opportunities more than ever.
00:19:30
Speaker
Yes, so as you say, sadly, those gaps have actually been exacerbated right now in this current context. They have. Yeah, they really have. Yeah, it's heartbreaking to see. So the I Will ambassadors obviously fit within this collective.
00:19:46
Speaker
The I Will campaign, is that a separate sort of work stream or separate pillar? And what has that achieved and what are the learnings around the campaign? So we set up a step up to serve as an organisation, but what we wanted to do was always have the name of the campaign separate from us as an organisation, with a view that the
00:20:06
Speaker
The I Will campaign and the use of the I Will brand and things could always live on after Step Up to Serve closed down. So the aspiration absolutely is, is after we as an organization close down, we can hand over the I Will campaign that comes with the I Will fund, there's the I Will ambassadors that can continue and live on through others after the organization Step Up to Serve closes down. So I guess it's just the name
00:20:29
Speaker
for the campaign overall and it was always a useful hashtag to be able to use because anyone could use it. Whether you're a young person or an organisation or a business or a school, you can pledge to say what you will do to enable more youth social action. The idea has always been that the I Will campaign and the use of that language can continue after Step Up to Serve closes down.
00:20:54
Speaker
So talking about the youth investment fund and this 500 million pot of money that you got from government and well done on securing that, that's an amazingly significant amount of funds.
Securing Government Funding
00:21:08
Speaker
Tell us, where is this being spent and what is the money seeking to achieve?
00:21:12
Speaker
So I guess there's two different areas of funding. So we've secured initially the I Will Fund, which is a kind of a big fund that's got investment from the government and the lottery. And that's then been matched by about 28 different match funders. So that has already been investing for a number of years now and will continue to invest for another few years and possibly beyond that in opportunities for young people.
00:21:33
Speaker
And then what we also have done, we had a group called the Scale and Reach group originally, which was chaired by one of our trustees, Matt Hyde, who's the chief exec of the Scouts. And that has turned into over time the Back Youth Alliance. So this is a group of organisations who we've brought together since the beginning of the campaign, who are the leading youth organisations.
00:21:53
Speaker
and effectively we collectively lobbied the government around the fact that there was a need for actually broader investment into young peoples and opportunities for young people of which social action is a really important component but actually it needs investment in the broader youth sector
00:22:08
Speaker
So that's where the kind of influencing in lobbying for the Youth Investment Fund came about. So that is actually I think being announced pretty shortly, the kind of what it's going to be spent on and so on. It was going to be announced pre-COVID, but obviously then COVID's come about and the shape of the fund has changed slightly. But it's going to be about kind of capital investment and broader investment into youth services across the country. And that's an investment over the next five years that's been committed.
00:22:37
Speaker
So they're going to, as I said, be announcing I think in kind of mid-September exactly what the first sort of wave of that is going to look like, because as I said, it got delayed a bit by COVID. But yeah, brilliant and much needed investment into services for young people, which have had taken a bit of a buttering over recent years. So really, really important time to invest in them because young people need them more than ever. That's absolutely brilliant to hear.
00:23:01
Speaker
I was on a webinar recently held by pro bono economics featuring Danny Kruger MP. As you probably know, Danny Kruger was asked by the government to conduct a review of civil society and to submit policy recommendations on how to put civil society at the heart of the government's leveling up agenda.
Youth Involvement in Policy-Making
00:23:20
Speaker
Now on this webinar, he didn't go into the details of his proposals, but he outlined his thinking on some of the key principles behind his recommendations.
00:23:29
Speaker
And one of the things he emphasized was that we really need to be harnessing the skills and talents of young people so that they can feed into a framework for national policymaking. And I can see Charlotte by your nodding that it becomes this no surprise to you, given your background in this area. I'm curious to know what are your views on how the government can make that happen effectively and what might some of the challenges be along the way?
00:23:56
Speaker
Danny Kruger actually, when he was a special advisor to Matt in DCMS, was a really excellent ally of the campaign and we've worked really closely with him. So yeah, he's been a great supporter about the kind of opportunities there could be for young people. Absolutely, we need to find a way that young people can feed into policy development. I think the government has tried and made steps towards this. So there are certain government departments that have started doing this really well. Defra, for example, has now
00:24:26
Speaker
really engaged a group of young people around policy development, around climate change really successfully. DCMS has got a group of young people who it consults around.
00:24:35
Speaker
kind of policy, so they are starting to, but it's in no way consistent or as engaged across all the different sorts of policy formation than it could be. So there's a huge amount more, and I know that the Children's Commissioner has been trying to champion this as well. There's a huge amount more that needs to be done, even to the point through COVID-19, where young people haven't actually been able to ask questions when we had the question time, because you couldn't ask if you were under 18. So there's just lots of barriers, I think, for young people to be able to engage with
00:25:05
Speaker
or access politics, but also lots more that we need to do to make sure those young people can be feeding in because they've got amazing ideas. It would not only help engage them with politics, but it would also help politics because it would be getting ideas from this brilliant, innovative, fantastic group of people in our communities.
00:25:25
Speaker
I know and I think the same actually applies for charities as well and charities that are looking to really meaningfully engage with young people. What advice would you give to charity leaders that are looking to embark on this and engage young people? How might they do that and what might that look like?
00:25:42
Speaker
First of all, I would just say do it because it is the most brilliant and engaging bit of my day. So let's step up to serve. We always from the beginning had at least kind of three or four young people on our board alongside, you know, some other much more experienced people. But it meant that at least a kind of a third of our board were young people. And actually it's increased over time because some of the young people have stayed on and we've brought up young people on and they have been absolutely brilliant. They are
00:26:10
Speaker
energised and engaged, they ask great questions, they mean that the other members of the board behave differently, but then also throughout the rest of our work, having young volunteers, whether it's young volunteers, young fundraisers, you name it, you know, young people can engage in different ways and charities. Engage throughout the work is just so energising and they will bring
00:26:31
Speaker
dynamism and enthusiasm and also a great resource to your organization that you just wouldn't have otherwise. They could have great digital skills, they have all sorts of things that people don't always have, and they often also have time if you can be flexible about when they can fit it in around their other commitments.
00:26:51
Speaker
You can get an amazing amount from young people once they find something they're passionate about and they get engaged. So yeah, it's just one of my favourite parts of my job is engaging with young people and getting to feel their energy and enthusiasm for things.
00:27:08
Speaker
It's great and it's also a great investment in the future of civil society. If we can get young people becoming trustees and volunteers as young people, that's when they form habits. And so they will then be volunteers and fundraisers and trustees and all those other things for the rest of their lives. So it's a great investment in our society more broadly, but in civil society, if we can get them engaged at a young age.
Post-Pandemic Societal Changes
00:27:30
Speaker
Yes, I think
00:27:32
Speaker
There are so many opportunities for young people to help us think through what the so-called new normal should be. And in the context of the crisis and the pandemic, what positives would you take from this whole experience? And what do you hope changes for the better? Do you mean for young people or generally?
00:27:50
Speaker
Well, both I suppose for young people and more generally and wider for society. So as you say, there is an opportunity for us all, if we all choose to take it, to use this as a bit of a moment to take a step back and think about what is the world we want to live in.
00:28:06
Speaker
and that is a great opportunity for everyone whether you're young or old to reset and I guess you can do that resetting in a really small way within your own life and your own family but there's also a really big opportunity for us as a society to do some resetting
00:28:23
Speaker
So whether it's, you know, changes to environmental things, because actually we're not all commuting as much or not all getting in our cars as much or, yeah, changes to our work-life balance if we're able to be home a bit more and not be in the office all the time or so on. I mean, there's all sorts of opportunities, I guess, for people to do a bit of a reset. And I think it's also given a lot of people a chance to step back and reflect on what's important to them. So we just had a week in Wales last week and it was
00:28:52
Speaker
it felt like the best holiday we've ever had because it's been such a strange year and we haven't been able to do so many things. Suddenly, small things are incredibly precious and so I'd like to think that we'd all keep hold of that somehow, keep hold of this idea that
00:29:10
Speaker
Actually, we can we can appreciate simple things in life, though I have to confess, you know, I very much try and be a glass half full kind of person most of the time. I am not a creature created for lockdown. I was absolutely itching to get out back to work after maternity leave and to get out into the office and to see people and to be out in amongst people and have random interactions. And so I find being locked in my bedroom upstairs looking at a screen all day is definitely not
00:29:40
Speaker
my, yeah, definitely not my ideal way of working at all, but in the grand scheme of things, I definitely can't complain because we're healthy and employed and all of those things that, you know, not everybody can take for granted. It's hard sometimes to find the silver linings when it's definitely not how most of us would want to be living, I don't think.
Inspiration & Future of Youth Engagement
00:29:58
Speaker
Talking about silver linings, what has been the best thing about being the CEO of Step Up to Serve? What really inspires you about the organization?
00:30:08
Speaker
Oh God, just the fact that young people are this amazing, incredible resource that we have in this country and around the world, in fact, who could be doing so much more to help us tackle the massive issues that we're facing as a society. And if there's anything any of us can do to help unlock that potential, that's the thing, I guess, that really motivates me.
00:30:31
Speaker
you know we will be all the richer for it obviously there's a great benefit to young people about getting involved but actually there is a huge societal benefit for all of us so it's a win-win it's an absolutely no-brainer for me and the more we can get young people involved in things actually the better the world will be for everyone so
00:30:49
Speaker
And as I said earlier, they're just amazing fun and they keep me young and they keep me energised. And I've just had the privilege, I think, for the last few jobs I've done to work really closely with young people. And yeah, it's just been amazing. So that's always what keeps me motivated. And also that I've got to work with amazing people, both in the team and on the board, but also all of the partners that we worked with and so on. It's been an incredible journey. And yeah, there's some
00:31:17
Speaker
people like Ramya and Sophie in the organisation who have been there right from the beginning with me, who will be there right to the end, who I've just, I've loved working with. So it's been, it's been a great journey. And yeah, we're not quite, not quite over yet. I'm looking forward to getting back into step up to serve before the end so we can close it down properly together.
Closing & Tease for Next Episode
00:31:37
Speaker
And that's it for part one of my conversation with Charlotte Hill, founding CEO of Step Up to Serve. To hear us talk about having babies whilst being chief execs, the perceived barriers to leadership for women, and discuss issues surrounding maternity and parental leave, tune in to part two, which will be available to download in two weeks time.
00:31:58
Speaker
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