Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s Tomorrow’s Natural Leaders (TNL) project provided placements for 96 young people enabling them to gain skills and experience in conservation land management, campaigning and community engagement. It also
  • reached out to 2,900 other young people through projects and sessions
  • worked in partnership with 386 different organisations
  • improved 760ha of land across 108 different nature reserves
  • provided career opportunities: 83% of the TNLs move onto new training or employment, 73% of these in the green sector
  • supported the TNLs to gain a total of nearly 200 qualifications
Examples of roles gained by TNLs after their placement include Water Catchment Officer at Yorkshire Water, an environmental consultant, Project Officer at TCV and a People Engagement Officer at Marine Conservation Society.
Tomorrow’s Natural Leaders has supported the personal and professional development of young people who it worked with. Each young person who joined the project had a different starting point and achieved a different set of outcomes. But all the young people we engaged felt they had benefited from the experience.
My confidence has improved massively – after three years of unemployment I was cut off – so confidence has improved. Overall mental wellbeing is a lot better than it was. I’ve got more of an idea of where I want to go as a job now and the wealth of knowledge I have learned that I can now put into place’
Have a read of this blog about Fife’s Our Bright Future project’s visit to the TNL project, learn about Megan’s experience in her blog, Georgina also blogged about her time with the project and John wrote about hosting a Youth Summit in Doncaster. You can also download the project evaluation report.
Although the TNL project formally finished in 2020, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust was able to use some underspend to pilot some different approaches to engaging young people in the sector with two schools. The Trust recognises how important it is to engage future generations from diverse backgrounds in its work. A short report has been produced which shares some insight from other organisations about the different tools and techniques that can be used to engage young people. It also provides some feedback from young people and teachers about what they gain from being part of sessions that expose them to nature and allows them to try new things.