Last Thursday the Baytree Centre (300 Brixton Rd, SW9 6AE) organised a Christmas showcase, an event in which the girls that had attended the courses, showed families and friends their skills on dancing, singing and acting.

The most deserving students were rewarded with specific certifications according to the classes they had attended in the past few months.


It was also an occasion to promote the activities of the Centre with a Fundraising in which the girls had been able to sell some of the natural cosmetics and products created few days before during the Give to Gain Beauty workshop.

Beauty workshop: another way to improve your skills

The 'Beauty Workshop' held yesterday at the Baytree Centre was a great opportunity for our volunteers to learn how to prepare natural cosmetics on the occasion of the Christmas Fundraising this coming Thursday December the12th. So not only the environment was stimulating and interesting, but also useful to learn new skills that they will be able to re-use for any future Fundraising. 

What they loved the most about the workshop was the fact that they were able to spend a pleasant afternoon meeting people and making new friends, but also realising how important is to treat your skin and body with the best possible care. They became aware of the fact that what you buy in shops sometimes can contain too many chemicals and harm your skin.

If you are curious about these natural products or you are looking for an original idea for your Secret Santa, come to our Christmas Fundraising, Thursday the 12th from 5 to 6.30 pm at Baytree (300 Brixton Rd, SW9 6AE). You won't be disappointed!

A career in journalism? Build up your skills with the G2G project!

British journalist John Humphrys

One of our G2G project volunteers has recently been interviewed to talk about her interest in journalism.

1. What's your name and how old are you?

My name is Lorianne and I’m 16 years old, currently doing my AS levels.

2. Why are you interested in taking this course?

I would like to gain experience which may help me in achieving my dream of becoming a journalist.
 

3. How did you hear about the course?

I heard about it through the G2G team.

4. How did you hear about the Baytree Centre and the G2G project?

I heard about the G2G project from my head of year at school who knows I’m interested in journalism, and I’ve always had a connection to the Baytree Centre as I used to do activities after school when I was younger.

5. What do you like to do in your spare time? (writing blogs, features, if any)

I visit a lot of art galleries and exhibitions, read a lot, volunteering at a care home. I have also on occasion written articles for my old school.

6. What do you hope to learn from the course?

I hope to gain experience I can find useful in my chosen career.

7. Do you think that the course will help you on the way to realise your dream of working in journalism?

Yes, as hearing from an actual journalist will give me some more insight about what it’s actually like to be a journalist.

Coffee and Culture

Every week, girls from different countries and different patterns of life meet in Dawliffe Hall (Chelsea, London). They have named these gatherings Coffee and Culture! 

What are these meetings about? As the name suggests, participants meet in a cozy living room holding cups of hot coffee in their hands! Every week a different speaker shares a special "something" with the girls (a story, an idea, an experience) and leads a lively discussion in which everyone is encouraged to share her thoughts.  

Our friend Fran is a volunteer. She is also a member of the Coffee and Culture! We met her right after a talk on The History of Happiness and asked her why it is important for young volunteers to develop their personal and emotional skills by joining groups like this one. And here's her answer!

"From the talk on ‘The History of Happiness’ I have discovered a new way of looking at happiness, what is necessary for happiness/ optimal functioning etc. This has helped me change my outlook on my work as being a University student sometimes I get overwhelmed with the work load. Therefore knowing that I am working towards a goal, and that sometimes this goal involves difficulties along the way helps put things into perspective.

Hopefully I will be able to apply this to the current volunteering I do and pass on what I have learnt to younger students."

Would you like to learn more about this? We do!

We are looking forward to getting more information about the Coffee and Culture!!!

The advantages of social media and how to build your own platform

We were lucky to have Marta Matias, a media strategist from the International University of Barcelona at Baytree. Her expertise in Social media has me thinking of the world we live in. Certainly Social Media is around us. We may be a generation that simply adores the fast paced instant contact, for business as well as personal purposes. I have learnt Social Media is:

GREAT FOR NETWORKING

Do you love networking? Then twitter is the best way! With a click of the mouse you can go from being a mere stranger to building a high profile platform with quite a large number of audiences in minutes.

GET A STRONG PASSWORD

Matias suggested we should always make a password of more than 10 letters with numbers and lower/higher case letters. This can protect your identity from hackers. She said use a sentence rather than your favourite word. Fair enough with the high media coverage and almost ¾ quarters of the world using social media we definitely need to protect our privacy.

PICTURES FEED OUR DESIRES

Want to become an expert at something? If you are into fashion you can take a Prada bag and a good picture, upload it on any social media and you are guaranteed to have followers in minutes. A picture can convey a message without using words in fact it sells. No doubt then, social media is a very clever tool and used wisely and I mean wisely can seriously make you business.

EXPOSURE IS A RISK

However, like all things using social media comes with a certain risk. Exposure comes with attracting both followers and haters. Be prepared for the unexpected if you are using Facebook, as this is a gossip market. Exposure is a good thing because we are pro-consumers, we dictate which products we want so power to the people but with many changes going on in social media, one has to wonder:

1. How to control a virtual world, where everyone has a right to voice their opinion which can destroy our image if anything bad gets posted

2. Overload of everything is like too much of a headache at times

3. Nothing is stable for long on social media

Matias suggests success online means to be open, own up to anything otherwise someone will do it for you and you may not like it. One thing for sure social media is innovative and also an everlasting progressive art form and we can be masters at it, if we choose.

So what is the best way to establish your platform? Know your subject and talk about it on social media. Keep the same subject, don’t be an expert of everything. Having your niche makes you stand out.

Matias suggests the content of information must be valuable, have no barriers (people must be allowed to comment), must be conversational and there must be sharing.

THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Tweet tweet tweet if you want to get instant information out there.

YouTube is the way forward!!! Whether you use social media or not, it’s the future for personal and business use and if you are not part of it, it’s likely you will lose out in some way.

Leaving the seminar I felt much more informed knowing that new ideas will lead to new discoveries and the platform of social media is open to all.

Time for reflection

The Give to Gain project seems to be coming to an end too quickly! All of these months have seen so many amazing things going on and wonderful young women working together. 

At Baytree, the G2G Media and Management Team is now half way in their journey as facilitators of the Media and Management seminar series and it is time for some nice and wise reflections on what we’ve done and learnt!

Thanks to the Team efforts, the training programme reached more than 30 volunteers and community members! They received high quality training in different areas, such as teaching, journalism and media. Most of them told us that the workshops were great and definitely in line with their expectations! I think this is a very good start.

The best part is that those young attendees who were not involved in any of the Baytree volunteering opportunities said that they would love to know more and get on board because they feel they have something to give. This is the spirit!

This is a real lesson for us about the potential local communities have when people with different skills and a lot of enthusiasm come together. You just need a small spark, like an interesting workshop, and people meet… and they talk and share… and the rest come naturally!

But the Give to Gain has taught us something else. This project has connected volunteers across boarders!

Recently, the Spanish team called us on Skype! It was my first real-time contact with our partners. They told us about their work running homework clubs for children and promoting initiatives to support the community as a whole. These young women are doing a great job! But what really impressed me was the enthusiasm and optimism that remained with me after the call was over. Does it sound cheesy? Well, you should try!

Share your positive experience because people can get a lot of positive energy out of it!

What have you learnt? How do you feel about being part of the project?

Comments, comments, comments! I want to know all of your thoughts!

I am sure we are all ready to rock all of the activities that we have planned for the final part of the project! Best of luck to you all!

Chiara

Media and Management Team

Give to gain project: 10 tips for a successful blog

Hello everyone,

my name is Giorgia and 2 weeks ago I had the pleasure to share my experience as a blogger on the Give to gain project.

Today blogs are a daily presence in our lives, but if we want to become bloggers or we need to write a post we should keep in mind some useful guidelines that will help our readers enjoy what we are writing about.

The main feature for an article is that must be "ENGAGING", which means it has to attract as much people as possible. How do we do that? 

1) It's all about CONTENT!
Content must be interesting, useful, original and well written in terms of grammar and spelling. Nobody wants to read a copy\paste article. Make it personal!!!

2) UPDATE - The more you update your blog the better! Experts suggest once a day, but it also depends on the topic of your blog and how much time you can dedicate to it.

3) LENGTH - Articles must not be neither too short nor too long. Ideal length is between 250 and 450 words.

4) PICTURES are always recommended together with text. If you use somebody else's photo make sure you mention the author or the source where you found it.

5) KEYWORDS or TAGS are very important for the SEO (Search engine optimization) because help your blog to be found when people browse search engines.

6) DESIGN & BLOG STRUCTURE must be usable and with nice colours and layout. 

7) SAFETY -  Never write personal details/addresses and never offend people online.

8) SOCIAL MEDIA (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Google Plus, PInterest)

a. create your own Official page or profile on the social media

b. sharing on different platforms and on topic-related groups

c. reply to comments and emails

9) NETWORKING is also an excellent strategy. Create your own niche of readers by doing some researches, leave comments and links on topic-related blogs and websites, use guest blogging and interviews to gain more visibility.

10) THE P FACTOR Whatever topic you want to talk about... do it with PASSION. It doesn't matter if it is food, photography, make up, knitting, volunteering, cinema or politics, just be passionate about it.

These are the basic rules to run a successful blog. My food blog is about Sicilian Cuisine. It was created almost three years ago and the response I have received so far is really amazing. If you follow these simple tips I am sure we could read your blogs very soon. 

Good luck!!!

Give to gain project: Success for our first seminar!

Give to Gain’s first seminar, 'working with young people' kicked off with a bang. The course was jammed pack with lots of information helping 24 volunteers and mentors improve their knowledge of the British school system and our volunteers work with young people. We would like to say a big thank you to everyone who attended. As we mentioned in our first post Give to Gain is an organisation supported by the "Youth in Action" programme of the EU, helping to give back to our community and gain some professional skills, as well as making some new friends along the way.

Our next seminar, an 'Introduction to journalism and news writing' is a free seminar held at the Baytree Centre on 31^st October 2013. This seminar is designed to help attendees develop their knowledge and understanding of Media to maximise their career prospects and develop skills that employers want.

Media and Communications is an exciting, multidisciplinary industry, so gaining basic media and communication skills that will prepare attendees of the course with sound knowledge on the world of media, will be a step in the right direction in getting their dream job. The Media industry is a growing industry and everyday we use media to engage with friends by texting, using Facebook and the Internet, TV, newspapers, magazines, radio, photography and films. Students will gain skills in oral and written communication, the analysis of existing media and their audiences, how media and communication industries work,as well as a range of research skills.

So, if this sounds right up your street, please click here https://g2g-journalism.eventbrite.co.uk/ to sign up to the course.

Introduction to Give to Gain

Welcome to the official Give to Gain UK blog!

This being the very first post, it would be good to make some introductions. Give to Gain is an organisation supported by the "Youth in Action" programme of the EU. The main aim of the project is to help to give back to our community and gain some professional skills, as well as maybe making some new friends along the way.

The names of the team members are: Faye, Justnara, Uwaye, Siham, and Lorianne. We are all women with ages ranging from sixteen and still in school, to those slightly older with a lot of previous experience. There's a massive variety of backgrounds and upbringing between the team members, with no one of us being from the same place - making this team a great and diverse group. All of us are volunteers, with a real enthusiasm for this project, each with something different to add to the team.

From now until February 2014, we will be organising a number of events and projects particularly aimed at doing something fun for our community - this may be anything from a knitting class, to learning the ways that different cultures cook a type of dish. As well as that, there will be the opportunity to learn about some skills that are more applicable to professional situations through a number of seminars with a wide range of topics, ranging from journalism to project management and even how to use media such as Twitter.

We hope to get a rich and rewarding experience through Give to Gain and look forward to the future.

Thanks for reading!