Knowledge to Action Youth Leadership Summit 2012

 

 

Youth Summit Feedback

 Ryan Kressinger

- What new skills did you gain? Team Building, Motivational techniques, leading a team.

- What new things did you learn about yourself? I found out how well I progress when leading a team and being in my flow as we call it, as I was told I come into my own and helps others really well. Also I was able to accept something's I never believed I could and was able to speak about it as well.

- How has this experience changed your way of thinking/your views? I think the experience has opened my eyes more in to seeing that you can achieve anything if you believe in your goal and find each step you need to complete before reaching your goal. Also it has made me think more about other people.

- If given the chance would you do it all over again? I would jump at the chance and go again. They would like me to go 2 times next year so I am trying my best to find out as much as I can so I can make sure I attend. Harry also told me he wanted me to be a lead coach at future summits and will be trained as a life coach, and I would begin in SanDiego next year and then followed by the one here in the UK.

- What was the highlight of your experience in the 6 days? The highlight for me was every day because we learned something new and was able to place it in different parts of our everyday life to see how we can apply it. Also it was probably Thursday and Friday because with my team and coach we was able to speak about many things I have personally not before spoken about.

                                                                                                                                   

From: Chaniece Nugent-Whittle
Sent: 06 November 2012 14:10
To: Leigh Christodoulou
Subject: feedback

 

 

Feedback:

The youth leadership summit has been one of the best weeks of my life and I have learnt so much. It has changed my life for the better and has made me a more positive individual. It has made me more determined to make a difference and follow my dreams, I would love to be involved in helping other young people and hopefully change the lives of other youth.

I don’t think anyone who didn’t come to the summit will understand how amazing it is unless they experience it themselves. I am grateful to have been a part of YLS and I was made very welcome and comfortable there.

Thank you Angela for allowing me to be a part of it and hopefully I can grow with YLS as the years go on. I have learned various leadership, communication and teamwork skills whilst I was there and have learnt that I can do well and that I should believe in myself more.

My best moments on being on the summit was having the motivational speakers come and talk to us about different topics. They were all inspiring in different ways.

Lastly being with all the other youth everyday taking part in different activities; the leap of faith jump was amazing and so glad I participated in the summit.

 

 

Chaniece Nugent-Whittle

Dear Katherine, Greg, Mark and Chris

 

Please see the message below from my son, Alexander Penny, who attended the Youth Leadership Summit. 

 

We are immensely grateful for the experience he was privileged to have last week.  

 

Thank you deeply for making that possible, particularly as I can see first hand that he has gained an incredible amount, which is a particular joy as a parent to see.  Alexander works very hard at everything he does, but it doesn't always come easily and he often lacks the confidence to get the most from life.  

 

He is noticeably more positive in general and clearer about his goals and ambitions.  It is already apparent that he has greatly benefited from the emotional and well-being guidance too.   He has been teaching me the "centering" exercise, which he learnt from Steve Jack, which it is obvious he will find helpful in this run up to his gcses and in everyday life.  

 

Thank you all for making this possible and for genuinely doing something so valuable for young people- especially in the notoriously challenging but seldom supported teenage years.

 

Having watched me learning to trade and him hearing directly from Greg what a liberating career trading can be, Alexander would jump at any opportunity to learn from the experts!  It particularly appealed to him the ability to have a successful career alongside being able to have time to have a family and specifically he would like to work to improve the standards of housing in shanty towns.   

 

He also said he was glad he was one of the positive people in terms of his attitude to wealth and wealthy people, which Greg explained as being key.

 

Please read his own message below.

 

With our most sincere thanks

 

Selina Sasse and Alexander's father, Edward Penny

 

-----Original Message-----

 

Dear Katherine, Greg, Chris and  Mark

 

 Thank you so much for granting me my place on the course, allowing me to attend.

 

 It was an amazing experience which I got a great deal out of. (Hopefully I'll be returning as an alumni). I feel I have learnt the power of teamwork and positivity trough the great speakers which took part ( especially Judymay who I had supper with one night and was very caring and interesting to talk to).

 

  I've already noticed I feel more at ease talking to strangers and acquaintances which I feel will be a very use full life skill and my friends have commented on my positivity. I've also been trying to explain the things I learnt and the gains of these things but they have been quite reluctant and distrustful at points as they're not used to people smiling at school!

 

 

 

Thank you so much

Alexander penny

The future of charitable giving: Networking, delegation and cause-related marketing

The future of charitable giving: Networking, delegation and cause-related marketing

Just before Christmas my partner Greg Secker and I were invited by Sir Richard Branson to visit his Centre of Entrepreneurship in South Africa and discuss both his and our charitable work. As well as visiting a charity our own Foundation supports, we had the opportunity to discuss with Sir Richard how to ensure the future of charitable giving and how to make foundations as financially secure as possible. Here’s some of what we took away:

The key to charitable giving is creating a sustainable framework from which to operate. How many times have we all said that we would like to volunteer or even just give our old clothes to charity but never get around to doing it? Doing one-off small acts of kindness is rewarding but it is almost always more rewarding when you know you are doing it as a collective and know that your contributions are sustained in an impactful framework. The impact is greater and faster when people join forces and there is a certain camaraderie that is formed when you are doing something for the greater good.

The challenge with once-off giving is that the charity starts to rely on the income and then when it is removed having built their budgets upon it, they begin to fail. Charities need commitments from organisations and these must be of a symbiotic nature. A good example of this is Nabisco biscuits in the US. Their sales had been falling year to year and they needed to boost their profits so they decided to use cause-related marketing and team up with the World Wildlife Fund. They designed a new special edition range of biscuits, each representing the 4 most endangered species, and changed the box string to green. They promised to donate 5 cents from every sale to the WWF. The results were equally wild - $100,000 was raised for the charity and sales increased by 20% over the course of the two year promotion.

So how do we get our business leaders to think differently? In a chat with Sir Richard Branson in his game lodge he says, “Leaders stay at the coal face for too long, delegate early and then you can make better decisions about the company’s greater vision”. Greg Secker says, “You can think and you can work, but you can’t do both at the same time. The strategy should look like:

1)      Delegate early, leaders should be thinking and planning the vision rather than being caught up in day to day

2)      Identify an appropriate charity that would bring in revenue to the organisation by association

3)      Align and plan goals, put the marketing directors from your organisation and the charity together to agree outcomes and steps

4)      Monitor and change as appropriate

5)      Ensure PR represents both the company and the charity. Tell a story that touches the heart of the matter”

Running a Foundation is about touching peoples’ hearts so that you move them into action. There is nothing more powerful than knowing your own vision and being able to share it. One of the things that impressed me the most about Sir Richard Branson is the way that he shares his vision and brings people together, organising monthly think tanks at Neckar island and other venues around the world for leaders to get together to discuss social change and current topics. When the earthquakes in Haiti hit, Branson immediately gathered a group to discuss how they could join forces to help. He is a pioneer of using leveraged networking to make things happen. This is also a good example of how Branson seamlessly delegates even if it is to other social entrepreneurs.

We need to think differently as business leaders to embed charity into our business plan  so it becomes an integral and symbiotic component where one needs the other to succeed, this way the charity is not the first thing to get cut in times of economic downturn. What we’ve learnt over the past year was how to build a charitable vehicle that runs smoothly and how to leverage the power of the people to make things happen. We have used our expert knowledge of trading the currency markets to create novel systems that generate large sums of money for charity. All the way we have thought out of the box and asked ourselves, how can we build a system that helps the company and the charity symbiotically?

Our greatest fundraising vehicle is our annual Flying Trader project where Greg trades from a helicopter high over London sending his trade calls down to our trading floor as hundreds of clients follow his trades simultaneously. Last year it raised over £150,000 and in our recent trip to The Ubuntu Education Fund we were able to see how that money was already making a difference.

The money comes from ticket sales to attend the events and our broker ETX Capital gives all brokerage commissions to the Foundation. It is a perfect example of a symbiotic relationship as the more our clients trade, the more money they earn themselves and the more commission they generate for charity. The broker is also happy as we are increasing the volume of people regularly trading and we encourage our clients to use ETX as a broker because of their charitable giving. Our delegates also form a close and more trusting relationship with us because they can see we are not only teaching them to trade but we are also helping charities in the process.

We will be holding another six flying Trader days this year, the first starting in March. Our target is to raise £250,000 in total for our chosen charities, Barnardo’s and The Ubuntu Education Fund.

Katherine Scott, founder of the Knowledge to Action Foundation