Messaging used during the pandemic was not youth friendly and didn’t represent young people’s voices. This project, funded by National Lottery, involved the creation of animated videos to share young people’s worries around the pandemic and reinforce that support is still available.

About the project

When the coronavirus pandemic started, there was a lot of information about COVID-19. The messaging was often not youth friendly or representative of young people in Wales. Data collected from the Meic helpline suggested that 35% of young people wanted COVID-19 information in a way that they could understand. Others wanted to discuss the impact that the pandemic was having on their mental health and relationships.

Whilst organisations were trying their best to transform their services digitally, lots of young people were left feeling voiceless. Many young people also did not know where to turn to for help that they could previously access face-to-face.

The aim of this project was to capture the voices, feelings, and worries of young people from across Wales during the pandemic. This would be used to help other young people realise that they are not alone. ProMo-Cymru also reinforced that help was still available for young people. Organisations were still open, despite some being in a different format to usual.

What happened?

In the initial stages of the project, ProMo-Cymru consulted with a focus group of young people by asking them what worried them during the pandemic. This was discussed, with young people’s worries being categorised into different topics. Young people were then asked which three topics were most important to them. These were (1) wellbeing and mental health, (2) learning online and transitioning from education to employment, and (3) online information and safety was most important.

With this information, ProMo-Cymru created video animations to share the youth voices per topic, six videos were created, three English and three Welsh language. At the end of the videos, organisations offering support for young people were promoted. These included Meic, Platfform and Mind Cymru. The videos were made to be one minute long to fit the maximum length of an Instagram post.

Watch the videos on the ProMo-Cymru YouTube channel:

Video 1 – Mental health and wellbeing 

Video 2 – Online learning and transitioning

Video 3 – Online information and safety

Outcomes

Paid and organic digital communications were used to reach thousands of young people under 25 across Wales, using channels that they are using such as Instagram. In total, the videos achieved 13,727 impressions and 12,957 video plays so far.

If you’re interested working with us to create videos to support young people, contact Dayana at dayana@promo.cymru