Sussex Uni wants to play a model role with Brighton’s students

The Role Models Project is a peer-led mentoring project, that trains Sussex Uni students to create and deliver workshops for teenagers at Brighton Aldridge Community Academy.

The aim of the Role Models Project is to provide young people in the local community with role models, a safe supported space to be listened to and ask questions, and an appropriate environment in which to engage with PSHE topics.

This covers areas such as mental health and well-being, digital technology and social media, body image and self esteem, gender and sexuality, healthy relationships and our relationships to the wider world.

The workshops are framed around inspiring engagement, agency and critical thinking, towards these important personal, social and political issues. The workshops deliver a 1-to-1 ratio of Sussex students to young people, in order to enable the peer-mentoring element, rethink traditional education models, and focus on small group work and 1 on 1 conversations.

The Project is founded in the belief in the power and wisdom of youth, and originates in a desire to create inter-generational dialogue through peer-mentoring, and a passing on of “what we wish we’d known” from Sussex students to younger members of our community in Brighton & Hove. They aim to empower students to engage with the question of how we educate young people and what we educate them about. The project will provide the training and support to research, write and facilitate workshops and become involved in a national dialogue on PSHE education.