Overview:
The Heroes Journey has been created and run by the nationally renowned and acclaimed company Humanutopia. This organisation put people first with their two main outcomes being to help people grow and in doing so, helping transform cultures.
Humanutopia is an interactive programme designed to help young people make positive changes and to improve their life chances. This is achieved by focusing on the 5 main areas:
- Hope
- Confidence
- Happiness
- Relationships
- Employability skills and life chances
The vehicle for Humanutopia’s work is the “Heroes Journey” which asks students of secondary school age to volunteer to become heroes, with the aims of improving their life chances by developing life skills and to break negative cycles at home, school and in their community by becoming pro-social role models for younger children.
Current Programmes:
These methods are not quick fix and require a longer term collaboration to create and sustain a paradigm shift. In order to sustain the engagement of students we currently run 2 programmes within the academy:
Year 11 Heroes – Icon Sessions
30 Year 11 students continue to mentor a group of 20 year 8 students. The Icon Sessions are run as informal activities to facilitate engagement, discussion and social interaction. This has proved to be very successful and is evident in the relationships fostered with the 2 year groups.
Year 10 Heroes – Peer Mentoring
In order to sustain the impact with year 10 students and engage year 7 students with the programme we have developed a Heroes Mentoring Programme. 42 Year 10 students have completed the Heroes Mentor Training in order to mentor and support year 7 students.
Primary School Workshops
Humanutopia is also used as a means of interacting and supporting primary school students as the transfer to secondary education. The year 10 and 11 heroes have been involved in a number of days with primary schools and and this has had a profound impact not only on our Heroes but also the primary school students.
Garston Church of England Primary School:
“I thought it was fantastic event because all concerned benefitted from it. The Year 5 children in my class had a group discussion once back in the classroom about what they had experienced. They enjoyed meeting the other children from the other school. They said they were nervous about meeting the Year 10 children beforehand, but they weren’t as intimidating as they had previously expected and now feel more confident about starting in Year 7. It was good for the children to hear different opinions and all ages have issues which they can overcome if they put their mind to it”
St. Anthony of Padua Primary School
“The children really enjoyed the afternoon and beneficial from discussion with older pupils on their friendships, goals and aspirations”
Middlefield Primary School:
“This was a great opportunity for the students to interact with teenagers in a school setting, the relationships formed will reassure students for the transition from primary to secondary”
