Hearing from Young Voices: Outside of the Box Focus Group

Last week we hosted a focus group for our new Outside of the Box Programme with a group of six 8–11-year-olds. The programme facilitates conversations about prejudice, preconceptions and stigma related to differences, with a particular focus on healthy masculinity and femininity. Children are growing up in an increasingly complex social environment, where discrimination, harmful gender stereotypes, misogyny, toxic masculinity and prejudice continue to shape attitudes, relationships and behaviour, which are only further amplified by social media content.  

In the first part of the focus group, we delivered a session on difference related prejudice, stigma and preconceptions. We learned what they felt were the most important issues children are facing today, helping us tailor the programme to best meet their needs and concerns. The group were enthusiastic about the programme and were keen to be involved in other sessions. They were particularly interested in learning more about LGBTQA+, highlighting an important topic for future sessions.  

Part of the programme also involves supporting young people to become peer educators by designing and developing peer education resources and a peer education session on the topic of difference and gender. One of the highlights of the day was having our first Outside of the Box peer educator, Ethan, take a lead role in delivering the session for the focus group. Having previously taken part in some of the pilot workshops at his primary school, Ethan felt confident enough in his understanding of the topic and the aims of the project to facilitate the group activities and discussions they provoked and illustrated to us that a peer education approach can and should be central to this project. Peer education will help to develop leadership skills in young people and create safe spaces for young people to talk about gender stereotypes, stigma, and expectations.  

If you are interested in booking a stand-alone session for your students or youth group, or our dedicated 8-week peer education programme please contact Mark Hunter at Mark@fastforward.org.uk for more information.