The #IAMWHOLE campaign aimed to encourage young people to challenge harmful language and negative stigma surrounding mental health and encourage others to speak out and seek help.
Campaigning
Our latest campaigns
Whether you want to get active in your community, make your voice heard, or you’re just passionate about beating homelessness – we want you to campaign with us.
General Election Manifesto: Now’s our chance
Now’s our chance to get the next government to put young people and communities at the heart of their vision and deliver real change. We want everyone to have a fair chance to discover who they are and what they can become.
Wellbeing Report: Preventing Crises
Effective interventions to support children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing.
Trapped in the Cost of Living Crisis
Young people are trapped by the cost of living.
On the ropes: Youth Services
Every young person should have access to youth services in their area, all year round.
Unlocking Affordable Homes
Boosting affordable housebuilding to solve the housing crisis.
Move On Campaign
With your help, we will call on the Government to ensure that there is more support in place to allow young people to move on.
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Our Past Campaigns
Emily’s open letter to the Prime Minister.
Delays in getting mental health support meant Emily had to suffer alone. With early intervention, Emily’s story could have been so different. Now Emily is using her experience to campaign for others.
She has written a passionate letter to the Prime Minister outlining the urgent need to invest in NHS mental health services to help young people to thrive.
But she needs your support. Join Emily and sign her open letter to Rishi Sunak.
Lost, lonely and nowhere to turn.
This generation of young people has not had it easy. A global pandemic, a cost of living crisis and, as our most recent report, Generation Cut, highlights the devastating cuts to vital youth services.
As a result, young people have found themselves lost, lonely and with nowhere to turn. We are demanding the Government supports youth service provision all year round, giving young people the opportunity to grow before it is too late for this and the next generation.
A report examining local authority expenditure on youth services in England & Wales.
The day-to-day impact of youth services often goes unnoticed by the public, but the consequences of these cuts cannot be underestimated. Cases of knife crime, mental health difficulties and isolation among young people continue to rise, while the number of services available to positively intervene and prevent such cases continue to decline.
Figures uncovered by YMCA revealed the true extent of cuts to youth services funding by local authorities in England and Wales since 2010, with an allocation of just under £429m in 2018/19, compared to £1.4bn in 2010/11 – a real terms decline of 70%.
Mental health difficulties are costing young people their education, their employment prospects and without support, are costing them their lives. The NHS and YMCA responded with #IAMWHOLE.
Music 4 Mental Health
Music 4 Mental Health aimed to use the power of music to help break down the stigma and normalise the conversations surrounding mental health, in addition to raising vital funds for mental health projects targeting young people.
The Be Real Campaign, launched the Body Confidence Campaign Toolkit for Schools in January 2017.
The Be Real Campaign, founded by YMCA and Dove, produced a body confidence toolkit to help secondary schools and academies teach body confidence in the classroom and as a whole-school approach. Secondary schools are a key setting for young people to discuss and challenge body confidence issues, with both teachers and students playing an important role in how this happens.
Policy and Research
Our Policy and Research work aims at giving young people a voice.
Find out more about the impact or policy and research team is having and read our latest research reports.
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