By Lesley Lowden-Smith | Trust Income & Operations Manager
80% of young people diagnosed with cancer find the mental health impact of their diagnosis as difficult as the physical side leaving them overwhelmed, anxious and exhausted.
Many of us will understand the positive impact listening to podcasts can have on our mental health. They’re well known for helping to reduce stress and anxiety. Listening to some one else talk about their own experiences provides a level of emotional support and can help us gain new perspectives and increase our self-awareness.
Our Podcast challenge provided sixteen young people with a platform for self-expression, education, and inspiration, as well as teaching them a whole host of valuable skills that will support them in all aspects of their lives, as they created and recorded their own podcasts.
In teams of 4, the young people were allocated a mentor and set about meaningful content creation, considering their delivery format, and pitching ideas as well as creating a brand identity. They learned the skills of project management, delegation, and time management. Improved their resilience and developed their problem-solving skills.
Throughout, they learned the importance of boundaries, keeping themselves and each other safe, maintaining the secure environment that ensured everyone was able to contribute.
Taking it in turns to talk about their own experiences, their active listening skills came to the fore, ensuring they were supporters rather than fixers, empowering each other to build their own confidence and autonomy.
The Mentors, all have experience in the media industry and offered expert guidance to the young people. They included a digital marketing coach, a creative content marketing consultant and a founding partner of a global performance content marketing agency and presenter on Heart FM.
At the end of the day, the Judges, including Sarah-Jane Crawford, Sina Sadrzadeh and Dan Connell provided feedback on all aspects of the podcasts including pitch, execution, innovation, and hosting, and declared a winner.
The winning team delivered the first in their proposed series and outlined subsequent podcasts they would look to host. The winning podcast was called “F**k! I have cancer” allowing the young people to talk openly about how they felt at diagnosis, through treatment, and for some, following a relapse. They explored how their diagnosis had impacted their family, their friendships, and their relationships.
One of the young girls on the winning team, diagnosed with a secreting germ cell tumour at age 11, said “I found that talking about my experience in the format of recording a podcast was really therapeutic to me, I usually get so uncomfortable when talking about my experience because of my PTSD, I think the 'performance' nature of the podcast and how I was recording with a few people, even though I say my name, I still feel a level of anonymity really made me feel comfortable talking about things I wouldn't talk about outside of Teens Unite.”
All the young people who took part in this activity say they feel less anxious, their fear of living with cancer is reduced and their confidence is improved, they feel ready to return to education or employment.
To everyone who has supported our positive steps project, a HUGE thank you. If you would like to keep in touch with Teens Unite and see the impact of our commitment to improving the lives of teenagers and young adults diagnosed with cancer by improving
Please visit our website www.teensunite.org and register for our monthly newsletter.
With sincere thanks from the team at Teens Unite and the young people we support.
By Lesley Lowden-Smith | Trust Income & Operations Manager
By Lesley Lowden-Smith | Head of Trust Income
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