Looking back on Young People's Week

Last week we held our first Young People’s Week on social media, and we want to thank you all for your fantastic contributions. There was some great discussion about the challenges of juggling CF with everything else young people have to deal with, and we received some lovely comments from parents who were encouraged to hear young people talking openly about their condition and how they handle the demands of cystic fibrosis. We particularly want to say a huge thanks to Holly Van Geffen and Charles Michael Duke for their takeover day on Wednesday, which provided an honest and often hilarious insight into life with CF from two very different perspectives (if you haven’t seen Charles’ video on how to tell people you have CF, we strongly recommend you check it out below:

We launched our call for young advisors to help guide our programme of work with young people – over on Hack it Up we’re asking you to tell us what you think the role of an advisor should be and seeking ideas on how we can involve more young people with CF in our work, so if you’re aged 16–25 get on over and have your say.

We also posted about our Bright Ideas Awards where young people with CF who have a business idea can apply for small grants to help them turn their ideas in to reality.

Zainab Nasim’s blog on graduating from uni with a First in Pharmacy was inspiring stuff – as she says, it was all down to “hard work, determination and motivation”. We’ll shortly be asking more young people to tell us about educational experiences and seeking some young ambassadors to inspire other people with CF to achieve their goals.

As you may have seen, we’re currently recruiting for a Youth Empowerment Officer, to join the team at our office and help us create an exciting and innovative programme. We’re looking for a creative and upbeat individual with a genuine desire to support young people with CF to live their lives unlimited.

The week marked the start of our new programme of work with young people, but it’s only the beginning. We want to keep up the conversations to find out what’s really important to you – and how we can empower young people to live their lives unlimited by cystic fibrosis. Next steps will be to set up our youth advisory group to ensure all our work with young people is fully informed by their views, and also to develop our young ambassadors programme, as well as starting to develop some exciting new projects and initiatives led by young people in the new year. We'll be making young people's week a regular feature too so keep an eye out for ways you can get involved as we build on the great feedback we received in Young People's week. So please continue to share your views with us.