The Raising Your Game creative consultation day was held with 16 young people to look at the brand identity of the project.

The day gave young people from the project an opportunity to feedback on the brand identity, to make sure it represented what they wanted and what they stood for. It also gave them an insight into marketing and branding, and helped the group to think about how the project could be promoted at a national and local level.

The young people informed the branding by using things in their lives that represent the five areas Raising Your Game is focusing on: building my life, people in my life, enjoying my life, my healthy life, and choosing my life.

The group also wanted to create characters that represented them. They felt these needed facial expressions and skin tones, to represent diversity in society and within the six Raising Your Game regions.

Raising Your Game is all about young people with a learning or communication disability. From start to finish the project will be informed by the young people involved, their determination, the challenges they face and their life goals.

Raising Your Game has just completed its first of five years! In that time, over a hundred young people have told us about the things in life that matter most to them. These have been grouped into five areas:

• building my life – employment and learning
• people in my life – family, friends and relationships
• enjoying my life – leisure, hobbies and interests
• my healthy life – keeping fit and staying healthy
• choosing my life – independence to do the things that I want to do

These five areas will form the foundation of Raising Your Game’s ongoing work.
By 2014, we aim to have national participation guides for organisations within the Criminal Justice System on how to include young people with a learning disability or communication difficulty in their service delivery. These guides will also be available for the private, public and charitable sectors to use when involving young people.

• 14 young people with a learning disability are now employed within the project.
• We are working with over 100 young people every month to find out what they want to do and how they want to do it.
• We are working with over 150 organisations, including local authorities, police and schools to make the project happen.
• Most importantly, every young person is learning new skills, and building their confidence and self-esteem.

Find out what a difference Raising Your Game has already made to young people.