ACT’s Youth Violence Education (ACTYVE) Programme is designed to both deter and prevent young
people from becoming involved in serious youth violence and also to support young people to make
better decisions, have less involvement in inappropriate behaviour and achieve better engagement
with learning and education. The programme is delivered over six sessions where we work with small
groups of young people. We target young people who have been identified as having been involved
or are ‘at risk’ of engaging in anti-social behaviour, association with crime, gangs, knife carrying, youth
violence or displaying very poor and/or disruptive behaviour within school.

The programme aims to improve the general behaviour and motivation of young people who are
disengaged, displaying poor behaviour, and are struggling to achieve their full potential within
school. The programme consists of one hour sessions and includes ice breakers, activities, discussions
and other exercises. The main focus of the sessions is based on personal narrative work, where we
share stories of real life people with similar lived experience in order to provide insight from their own
lives, we then examine and analyse the stories shared to challenge young people’s thinking, values
and behaviour.

Each session helps young people to create a space to become reflective and think about life’s
choices, helping participants to analyse negative thinking and behaviour patterns and practice
positive thinking and behaviours. We also use positive psychology, goal setting, visualisation and
practice strategies for overcoming barriers and using solution focused thinking.

Our programme also includes our baseline assessment to both monitor and track young people’s
progress and development, which enables us to measure the distance travelled by participant
throughout the programme measured over seven areas of a young person’s character. We use that
data to create a reports and charts the progress of each of the participant, highlighting both the
strengths and identifying areas of weakness or where a young person requires more support.
This programme can be combined with our ACT Right 1-2-1 Youth Coaching and mentoring Support
service please contact us for more details as programmes are tailored around your specific needs.

Working with young people we offer no magic pill to all the problems and issues that young people
face, but we are able to offer young people a space and the support to help accelerate young people’s
personal development, growth and maturity enabling young people to overcome barriers and move
forward positively more effectively.

Young people that learn to have a better relationships with themselves, get more out of life.