Rosa grantee Young Women’s Trust supports and represents over one million women aged 16-30 trapped by low or no pay and facing a life of poverty. We speak to participation manager Lydia Morgan, who was sponsored by Rosa to take part in the Emerging Leaders programme, run by Clore.
I am passionate about women’s equality and having worked in the voluntary sector for several years, I decided I wanted to play a part in helping address inequality for women. A role came up at the Young Women’s Trust and I went for it. My other passion is participation and engagement, making sure people who have experienced discrimination or inequality can make their voices heard, so they are part of the change. I joined at an exciting time when Young Women’s Trust was rebranding and I was focusing on the issues we should be campaigning about. We’re definitely making an impact; it’s amazing to see how far we’ve come in five years.
My manager has been really supportive about my career development and when I heard about the Clore Emerging Leaders programme, I knew I wanted to do it. Young Women’s Trust has received various grants from Rosa over the last few years and it was great to be sponsored by Rosa to do this course, too. In terms of my own personal development, it felt like a really good time. I’ve broadened my networks and had the chance to focus on and learn about myself. Making connections with the other women on the course and through Clore generally has been so useful and inspiring.
I used to feel intimidated by networking but being immersed in it straight away made me realise it’s not that scary and the opportunities it gives you just through conversations are huge; it brings all women’s organisations closer together. I also learnt a lot about myself as a leader during the residential sessions. The first one was daunting because I was worried about networking and wondered if we would be competing against each other, but I soon discovered we’re all on the same side, no matter what role we all had in our organisations, it didn’t matter; we all realised we had a lot to learn from each other. The second residential was more intense in terms of pushing us out of our comfort zone, making us think about how we communicate and work with others.
I’m so much more confident now; I used to feel intimidated when having interactions with managers at a higher level – do I actually have anything relevant to say? Will I look like an idiot if I do speak? The Clore programme taught me to recognise that if you are invited to a conversation, it’s for a reason – because they are interested in your knowledge, opinions and experience. I learnt skills to help me relax in those situations and participate in such a way that when I leave, I feel I contributed something worthwhile.
I found it helpful learning about the ways in which people work and understanding my team better, in terms of involving people from all different backgrounds; you have to think how accessible and inclusive you are. It’s useful to consider different working styles and what you might need to do to be able to work with someone in order to close that gap so it doesn’t become a difficult working relationship. That has been really helpful.
We need to be a driving force in closing the gap between us and policy-makers, to be more ballsy in connecting with other women’s organisations and being a stronger, more united force for change. One element of our challenge is to improve the mechanisms for young women and girls with lived experience to influence policy change and at the moment, they are disengaged with politics.
The political system needs a massive shake-up; they need to really listen and not just pay lip service. It can help to share ways that we can create change with all organisations; it costs money and time and resources but if there are ways in which we can share that knowledge and think of ways to do it, the smaller organisations can benefit and help with change.
Find out more about Young Women’s Trust at www.youngwomenstrust.org and follow on Twitter @YWTrust and Facebook @youngwomenstrust