Richard is PPC for Watford and explains here the mutual benefits of the innovative work experience programme he has introduced this summer for 16-23 year olds in the constituency.
When I began campaigning in Watford this year, it became clear to me that young volunteers in all the political parties were few and far between. The County Council and European election Campaigns were driven almost exclusively by middle aged and elderly people. I place myself very firmly in these categories. My 19 year old son pointed out that young people were not interested in Branches, Committees, Associations and all the paraphernalia of our activities at a local level. I agreed, but argued that politics could and should be something that young people consider to be both important and exciting.
Together with our Campaign Manager Peter Ganney, a pre-geriatric 26 year old, we decided to put together an organised work experience scheme over the summer holidays for 16 to 23 year olds. The plan was to make it fun, informative and good for the students’ CVs, but useful to us politically in helping us canvass the constituency, get people to put up posters at elections, and hopefully bring some youthful energy into future campaigns.
We placed an ad in the local paper and did some leafleting in the high street, but recruited most of the youngsters from direct mail and follow up. Using the electoral register and our recent canvass returns, we identified all 18-23 year olds living in Conservative households. We then hand delivered 400 letters with leaflets to them. A banging on the door follow-up produced most of the volunteers. There were more than 50 of them.
We planned three two-week programmes for the applicants. To help us deal with such a large group we appointed team leaders George Stafford, Joe Cawley, Olivier Telvi and Katy Laws. After some discussion we agreed that variation and fun were top priorities in order for the scheme to work. The first hour of every day is a sandwich lunch with a discussion about the previous day. The next two and a half hours are spent doing an activity which the three teams do on rotation, including petitioning on street stalls, writing a community news letter, policy discussion and telephone canvassing from our office. This is followed by two and half hours canvassing by the whole group.
Additionally, we take the groups on day-trips once a week. We visited Norwich to help in the by-election twice, delivering leaflets and having lunch with the party chairman Eric Pickles. A group also went to London for a tour of CCHQ, followed by a Geneva session doing telephone canvassing for Norwich and Watford. The first group was also photographed with Watford FC players handing over bags of kit to be taken to Rwanda by Alistair Burt MP.
A vital element of the scheme was a competition we created between individuals and the teams. Points were awarded for getting new poster board sites and volunteers. Each day at lunch results were read out, with a prize given to the previous day’s top point scorer. The prize for the daily individual winner is a voucher for music, a meal at a restaurant, or a trip to the cinema. The winning team at the end of each two week course gets a £200 Amazon voucher. The prizes were not of huge value financially, but created a fanatical level of competition.
This led to some very encouraging results. Over 4 weeks we have had about 250 new poster sites and 40 new volunteers who will help with distribution in the future, and the groups have successfully canvassed about 25% of the houses in Watford.
But perhaps most encouraging was the response we got from the youngsters themselves. Our opponents have written letters to local newspapers and blogs saying that we are “exploiting children”, and that we are “too pathetic to get any real volunteers”. Yet all our interns seemed to enjoy their time with us immensely. Many learnt new communication skills and greater self confidence, saying that they would never have dreamt they could knock on doors in a street and speak to people they didn’t know.
The main lesson was that young people, if given the right environment, are very interested in politics. Many of the youngsters stayed on past the end of their course to do some extra canvassing for us, asking if we would be organising similar programmes in the autumn half-term and Christmas holidays. As for myself, I am confident that when the time comes to campaign for a general election our campaign machine will be well oiled by the energy of youth.
If any other candidates are interested in replicating the programme, please email me.
