Prepare to Grow - Supporting Young People to Develop Life Skills

This two-day training program on Tuesday 3rd and Wednesday 4th December is for youth workers, case workers, teachers, social workers and others who work with young people. The training is fun, informative, interactive and engaging, giving participants the chance to explore what works when teaching young people about life skills, combined with time to practice using the various tools and activities from Prepare to Grow.

Prepare to Grow equips young people with the skills and knowledge they need to forge their own path in life, as they journey from adolescence to adulthood. Developed by Andrew Cummings, this toolkit is the culmination of more than 35 years experience working with young people to overcome challenges and give them the best possible start in life. Prepare to Grow focuses on developing young people’s life skills in key areas including:

• education and employment
• health and well-being
• healthy relationships
• teamwork and communication
• digital literacy and online safety
• financial literacy
• housing
• personal identity

Every participants receives a free Prepare to Grow toolkit containing over 300 activities, some developed especially for Prepare to Grow and others sourced from best practice examples from Australia and overseas. This includes games, discussion starters, scenarios, videos and worksheets - using a broad mix of one-to-one and group activities.

About Andrew Cummings:

Andrew has worked in the youth sector in Australia and Europe for over 35 years. He started his career in grassroots roles working with children and young people in out-of-home care and facing family breakdown, before moving into management and advocacy roles. His areas of specialism include enabling young people’s participation in decision making, and empowering refugee and migrant communities. In 2015 Andrew was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at the NSW Youth Work Awards, in recognition of his passion and commitment to achieving positive outcomes for young people.

After more than a decade leading national and international youth organisations, Andrew has worked as a freelance consultant, trainer and writer since 2013. He has written extensively on youth issues, with over 50 published works. These include text books, training manuals and resource kits published by youth organisations in Australia, UK, Denmark, Belgium and Canada. Andrew has also developed a wide range of training programs, delivering these to over 3,500 youth and community workers and more than 1,500 young people.

Feedback:

The following feedback was received in anonymous written evaluation forms, from 32 training participants at five Life Skills training workshops delivered by Andrew Cummings between March 2023 and March 2024:

• 100% of participants answered “yes” when asked “would you recommend this training to others?”

• 97% of participants scored the training at 10/10 when asked “how would you rate this training overall?”

• 88% of participants scored the training at 10/10 when asked “how well did the exercises and activities relate to the learning objectives, with 100% of participants scoring the training at 8 or higher.

Quotes from participant feedback:

"This was a fantastic training. Andrew, you were very engaging and knowledgeable. I feel prepared and ready to start doing (life skills programs) and excited to deliver them."

"Really loved this training and very excited and motivated to start delivering this to young people!!"

"Training was awesome. Felt like it was very safe space with lots of encouragement and respect for everyone.The trainer is amazing. 5 stars."

"Training delivery was easy to understand and it was broken up well."

"Great resources and scenarios and discussions about things relevant to our work. I enjoyed the activities."

"Thank you for delivering a training that was informative and interactive - great with a small group and safe space to share ;-)."

"Great trainer – very interactive and engaging. Activities really get people involved and open up space for shared discussion and reflections."

"Andrew was an amazing facilitator. He created a really conducive learning environment, and made everyone feel heard and valued. The perfect balance of fun and learning. Thank you."

"The training is very practical and helped me build my skills."

"Taught as if we were participating in (life skills programs) rather than being lectured."

"(I appreciated the) steps before things – e.g. explore values, get young people doing things for someone else to plant the seed, then turn the spotlight on them."

Host or Publisher Andrew Cummings