SJA Youth celebrated at palace

Over 1300 young people including 150 St John Ambulance Cadets have been invited to Buckingham Palace to celebrate youth organisations and officially launch a London youth partnership called YOU London. 

Royal meeting

At a special Youth Garden Party on 16 July, Their Royal Highnesses, The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall, will meet young people and adult volunteers who make up the nine organizations in the YOU London partnership. They are: St John Ambulance, The Scout Association, Air Training Corps, Girlguiding LaSER, Boy’s Brigade, Prince’s Trust, Air Cadets, Sea Cadet Corps, Volunteer Police Cadets and Army Cadet Force.

This unique network of youth organisations, aims to recruit more adult volunteers, to enable more young people to join and to share some resources.

Youth display

The 1300 young people will take part in a mass walk from Wellington Barracks to signify the coming together of these organisations. Once inside the Buckingham Palace Gardens, they will demonstrate some of their activities. There will be six bands performing, a gym display and two climbing frames. SJA Cadets will be demonstrating first aid and sign language including signing the project’s name: YOU.

Lack of youth leaders

The Prince called for youth organisations to work together nationally in partnership to maximise adventure and community opportunities for young people and to raise recruitment levels of adult volunteers. 

The Prince said:  ‘My hope is that, before too long, we can replicate YOU London on a national scale so that every young person in the United Kingdom has the opportunity, if they wish to, of joining a youth organisation. Our nation’s youth united together in exciting and rewarding activities should, I believe, be our ultimate goal.’

SJA supports

Wendy Human, Head of Youth at St John Ambulance, says: ‘YOU gives us a platform to share the views of hundreds of thousands of young people from uniformed youth organisations. It also gives us an opportunity, as charities, to share resources, which is extremely helpful in this current climate.’