Being a Young Trustee

In today’s blog, we will be talking all about what it’s like being a Young Trustee. Less than 3% of charity trustees are under 30 (Young Trustees Movement), which is a startling statistic and a gap that needs to change. Young trustees offer fresh perspectives and represent the voices of future generations.

To shed light on this important topic, we gathered three incredible speakers a couple of weeks ago to speak and share their personal experiences as young trustees and this is a summary of some of their amazing and useful points.

The speakers:

Alana: Young Trustee for Staffordshire Wildlife Trust

Joe: Young Trustee for Reserva Youth Land Trust and Small World Theatre

Elen: Young Trustee for Young Changers Sea Scotland

What motivated you to become a trustee, and how do you think your perspective as a young person adds value to the board?

Alana: I volunteered for causes that I cared about – in this case youth voice, and local wildlife and green spaces. I was asked to be a trustee in 2020 because the boards knew they needed to increase their diversity but were taking the first steps in building that. Since then, with the support of the Young Trustee Movement and the rise of Youth Councils/Forums/Advisory groups, the value that young people can bring to boards is much more widely appreciated – through their experience, perspective, and ambitions in life.

Elen: I grew up in a coastal area in North Wales and spent my entire childhood in and around the sea. When I moved to Stirling for university I moved to a landlocked place and lost my connection to the sea. The charity I am a trustee for helps to empower people to speak up for Scotland’s seas, so it gave me the opportunity to reconnect to the sea and hopefully help it thrive again.

Additionally, I work as an ecological consultant and the work we do is driven by construction and infrastructure-based industries. These feel like destructive behaviours, surveying wildlife to aid people building in their space. Being a trustee helps me give back to society and again helps me feel a little better about helping people. I add perspective because my charity aims to empower young people and as a young person, I give direct advice that I wish had been in place when I was volunteering/working with charities.

How was the application process when you applied to become a Trustee?

Alana:

  • The trustee interviews are a great way to check in with how your CV and experience is for governance opportunities. It can be nerve-wracking, and that’s okay as that means you are pushing your comfort zone and trying. Some larger charities might have competitive trustee application processes, so if you’re not sure, local charities are often keen to find trustees.
  • Most charities will have a rotation of trustees, in the case of the charities I’m a trustee of, we go for ‘re-election’ every 3 years and we have a maximum term of 9 or 12 years. So, charities will be regularly looking for trustees.

Elen: Very easy. I set up a marine conservation society with a friend at university. She is pretty well known in marine policy in Scotland and so was asked to join the board first. They then decided they wanted additional young people, and she was asked if she knew anyone that would be interested/had relevant experience, and she named me! I had an informal interview/chat with the director and then was asked to join!

What are some of the main things you do in your role?

Alana:

  • Ranges from monthly tasks such as reading papers, revising policies and the meetings itself to networking with similar organisations and being an ambassador for the organisation.
  • Depending on the size of the charity / organisation trustees will take less of a main role in the operational (day-to-day) work, instead we are advisors working with the Senior Leadership Team.

Elen: I am the EDI lead for the charity so I push the charity to do the best it can and assist the staff with additional manpower when they need it. My other roles include searching for and applying to funding, trustee recruitment, attending events to represent the charity and more!

What have been some of the most rewarding aspects of being a trustee so far and what are some of the challenges?

Alana:

  • Being able to approve the creation of new job roles and seeing those projects and initiatives come to life through the incredible people that they have employed.
  • Attending the Annual General Meetings and hearing about a year of great work.
  • Site visits to project locations and hearing from the staff and volunteers doing the good work on the ground.

Elen: Most rewarding aspects have been seeing the work we put in as trustees pay off. We work by aiding staff with running our training programmes, by securing funding etc, and then seeing this pay off with young people responding to consultations or coming up to us at events and saying that the skills they’ve learned have helped them get a job or pick a future career or write a letter to their MSP, is so rewarding!

Challenges – I am generally a very busy person. I work a full-time job which sometimes has long days and unusual shifts (dawns/dusks), have two volunteer positions, train for two sports and hold my trustee position. I sometimes struggle with having time and energy for everything, but I find if I am organised, I have time and if I make time for my hobbies (being outdoors) then I maintain energy!

Joe: I have loved being able to bring an ecology and nature policy angle to trustee discussions. It’s so cool getting to have these conversations with fellow trustees who come from different backgrounds and careers and finding solutions together about how the organisation might move forward on its strategic goals.

I have learned so much about different aspects of running an organisation such as accounting, maintenance, and safeguarding legislation – topics that I might not have a chance to experience until much later in my career, if at all!

How can organisations best support young people with being a trustee?

Alana:

  • Adaptable meeting times.
  • Providing training opportunities.
  • Interview on values in addition to experience (as an early-career… it’s impossible to have 40 years experience in a sector)… look for dedication and enthusiasm. So for young people interested in being trustees… how have you put effort towards the goal and values of that organisation? You are volunteering your time, so support organisations that align to your values!

Elen: Try not to overload your young trustees – they’re often exceptionally busy. Have an honest conversation with them about the workload that is expected of the trustees and ask them what their capacity is. Have a buddy system where you pair the incoming trustees with more experienced trustees so that they have someone to show them the ropes or to ask “stupid questions” to (there aren’t any stupid questions).

Joe: There are many laws around paying trustees of a charity. It effectively means that, in most cases, a trustee is an unpaid role. Therefore, it is very important that organisations do what they can to make the trustee position as accessible as possible to young people. If they can, they should cover any expenses related to the trustee role (travel, platforms etc.)

It’s important that young trustees are given access to any training and networking opportunities to ensure the role is beneficial to their careers. So even though we can’t be paid to be a trustee under most circumstances, there are ways to ensure that (a) we are not losing money and (b) there are future career benefits as well.

What advice would you give to other young people who are interested in becoming trustees but may be unsure or intimidated about getting started?

Alana:

  • If you are able to get involved in the charity before you become a trustee to see if their values and actions align with yours.
  • Research what a trustee is and read role descriptions (provided by most organisations recruiting trustees).
  • If an organisation isn’t advertising for trustees, but you are interested, contact them to see if they have any positions on the board available.
  • Talk to current trustees of the organisation you may be interested in.

Elen: Go for it! Try and chat to current or previous trustees to see what the board is like and how they found the experience. Make sure you research the charity thoroughly because you want to be sure it aligns with your views and is something you will remain passionate about – trustee positions are usually long term!

Joe: I think it’s really important to remember that a trustee is a “governance” role, which means they are ultimately responsible for overseeing the charity/organisation and its employees. This is different from advisory roles that many of us are familiar with. Of course, trustees are also advisors, but there are additional responsibilities and, as a result, liabilities. I urge anybody interested in becoming a trustee to ask about the potential fallback on you as a trustee.

Most charities will have some form of trustee or director insurance and/or policy, which covers eventualities such as the organisation going bankrupt or an insurance claim being made. Newer and/or smaller charities might not, so it’s just worth a conversation with current trustees and/or senior staff. The above isn’t meant to put anybody off and I really hope it hasn’t! I just wanted to share as I believe putting these safeguards in place ensures that we as young people can apply and properly engage in trustee roles without this fear.

Being trustee is one of the most rewarding experiences as you are actually helping to steer organisations you care about! You definitely have something to offer the organisation!

We hope this blog has given you some insight into what it’s like to be a young trustee and inspired you to consider becoming one yourself. Additionally, we encourage organisations to create more opportunities and support systems that enable young people to take on these roles, fostering diverse leaderships for the future. To finish we have put below some resources from the webinar team and speakers that will hopefully be interesting and useful.

Resources
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April 3, 2025 Ben Larsen Blog, Uncategorized No Comments  

Inspiring Future Generations: MS Delyth Jewell’s Powerful Speech on Rivers and Community

We recently held an event at the Senedd in Cardiff, entitled, ‘A Voice for Our Rivers’. We invited organisations and policy-makers, who were treated to a line-up of song and dance, speeches, and walls adorned with artwork that celebrated the UK’s freshwater species. This was all part of our Not So Freshwater campaign, which you can find out more about here.

Delyth’s speech

Our MS sponsor, Delyth Jewell shared these beautiful words about the importance of rivers in Wales (read below, or scroll to the bottom to watch instead):

“Thank you so much to everyone for being here this afternoon, and thank you so much to the Oasis One World Choir for singing and for dancing and for performing. For bringing that to life for us, because we need to remember that the reason that we all care about this is because of future generations.

It’s exactly what we’ve just been hearing. It’s for young people today and tomorrow. We have to save our rivers for young people like you, so thank you so much for inspiring us.

And it’s fitting that we should have music, because rivers in Wales, they sing to us the tune of our national anthem. Did you know this? The tune of our national anthem, Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, it was inspired by a river.

The person who composed that tune that we sing on match days and things like that, was when the River Tab – well, so the story goes anyway – the River Tab and the River Rhondon meet together in Pontypridd, and the gentlemen who heard these coming together, that inspired where Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau comes from.

So we are a nation that listens to rivers. That song that is now so synonymous with everything that makes us Welsh, in all of our amazing differences. That came to us through water.

But if those rivers sang to us now, it would be quite a sad song, wouldn’t it? That they’d be singing to us instead. Because so many of our streams are struggling for breath. You were just singing to us about how we need to save future generations. It’s because they are struggling, the rivers, the waters, they’re really struggling.

Dirty pollution is killing the plants and the fish and the animals that rely on these habitats for their sources of life. Now, we have to unclog them if we’re able to hear our rivers sing again.

This afternoon, I mean, I was going to say we’re into a real treat. We’ve already had a real treat with that, we’re being treated to this celebration in song and dance. So thank you again to Oasis One World Choir. 

We’ll be hearing from UK Youth for Nature campaigners, Welsh farming voices, there’ll be interactive art pieces like water testing, and all of this coming together in one massive cacophony of noise, and of voices coming together. That’s how it should be.

There’s a Welsh language poet called Waldo Williams, and he talks about this idea of ‘Un llef pedwar llais’ which means one harmony of four different voices coming together. This is very much how it should be. One flow of water, all different voices coming together.

Now, the campaign, the fight, the absolute necessity for doing this, it’s something which isshared, I think, across different political parties in the Senedd. Our Senedd was the first parliament to declare a nature and climate emergency. We need to make sure that those are acted on as much as they can be. I saw that Julie James was here earlier, who was the minister who had pushed these through. We have these hugely supportive voices in the Senedd who are fighting for these changes. 

Again, we have to make sure that it’s more than words, always. Because I think everyone, when you talk to your friends, they probably agree with you that this is important, don’t they? I think all young people think it’s important. It’s not always clear that decision makers will be willing to make the difficult decisions, and that’s what we need to happen. Because between us, together, we can make a difference.

The inspiration we’ve heard this afternoon here, the passion that the young people have brought here, the dedication that they have, the drive that we can all tell that they have, that’s something we have to keep in our hearts.

It’s something that we have to keep reminding ourselves why these difficult decisions need to be made. I mean, lots of these decisions aren’t actually difficult, you know? In terms of making sure that water companies are doing what they need to do to save our planet, making sure that rivers and streams and our seas are safe for children to play in, that they’re safe for habitats to thrive. This should be a no-brainer. It shouldn’t be about where money goes. In Wales, at least, we don’t have shareholders and water companies in the same way. We need to reform the way that all of that works. 

Our rivers, they sing to us of our yesterdays. Our rivers tell us the tale of where we as a nation have been. So let’s all make sure that youth voices are the ones that carry us forward to ensure that we as a nation, that we save the sounds of our waters for the future of these amazing young people. That their cry, unsullied by sewage or by pollution, will once again inspire great songs like our national anthem. like you’ve just been singing to us. Great songs for all the ages to come. Let’s save our rivers.”

For a full account of the event, see this blog from our community member, Joe Wilkins.

Feeling fired up to take action? Use our email template to write to your MP and encourage them to take action for rivers in your local area.

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December 17, 2024 Hannah Mulvany Blog No Comments  

Staff spotlight: Hannah Mulvany

Who are you?

There’s so many ways to answer this question but I won’t get too deep about it! I’m Hannah Mulvany – I’m the Head of Comms for UK Youth for Nature. I’m an Environmental Biologist and Communications Specialist with a love for funk and disco music, who has been a part-time vanlifer, part-time housesitter for the past 7 years. I’ve lived in seven different countries as an adult, recently learned my star sign describes me very accurately, only like spinach when it’s raw, and have always dreamed of playing the saxophone.

Me with one of the many dogs I’ve looked after!

How did you acquire this illustrious role?

As with most people, my career has taken many meandering pathways. After doing my degree in Conservation Biology at the University of the West of England, I got a job straight away at Wildscreen, where I had done an internship during my degree. Here, I worked as a researcher/author, later working on building up their photo and video library for global conservation non-profits. I also ran the public programme for the Wildscreen Festival, which included creating large-scale street art, touring a bicycle-powered cinema around the city and screening wildlife documentaries, and creating the world’s very first completely recycled and recyclable outdoor photography exhibition. Part of my role was creating content for social media, and helping to acquire the content that charities needed to tell their stories. I knew I’d hit the nail on the head with my career when I figured out how to blend my creativity with my passion for the natural world.

The photography exhibition I curated, and created the concept for (built and installed by my friend Femi).

What’s something you find really annoying about the state of the planet?

I don’t think anything annoys me more than littering. Watching someone casually discard a wrapper, cigarette butt or whatever they’re choosing to destroy the environment with makes me feel like Squidward after SpongeBob has asked him too many questions. I love cartoons – forgot that from the about me section!

Name three things that you do to help the planet.

I eat a plant-based diet, I only buy second hand or recycled clothes, and I have a sustainable bank account and pension plan. I don’t think anyone is perfect, and I’m certainly not, but I think taking baby steps and considering how any aspect of your life can be more environmentally friendly, then taking small steps to resolve them, is the best way to align your life with your values without feeling totally overwhelmed.

Being an environmental scientist can be pretty heavy at times, how do you manage this?

It is heavy, and I think it’s so important that as environmentalists we give ourselves time to recharge. Firstly, my phone gets turned off for a large proportion of the day because there is no ‘safe space’ online for me to ignore environmental issues – most of the accounts I follow on social media relate to the planet. I hike, do yoga, trail run, wild swim, mountain bike, surf, ski, and SUP – anything that involves moving my body outside, I’m into. When I’m doing these things I’m present, I look up, and I am surrounded by the flora and fauna I spend so much of my time trying to protect. Nature helps rejuvenate me when I feel run down from spending so much time trying to get people to care about it – there’s some reciprocity in that, and that feels kind of awesome.

If you could change one thing in the UK regarding nature, what would it be?

It sounds obvious, but for there to just be more of it! I grew up in the middle of Nottingham, which is a pretty nature-sparse city (especially where I lived). You have to travel pretty far to find anything that resembles nature, and thankfully I was dragged out into the countryside at any opportunity my Mum had, which was the starting point of my passion for protecting it. Not everyone has that opportunity. It would be great to take nature to more people rather than expecting them to come to it. I’d love to see more connectivity between nature reserves, more rewilding and more urban nature funding so that more people get the chance to connect with it too. We generally don’t care about things that we know nothing about and have no experience of, so why should we expect other people to?

Give us a nature recommendation.

Learn to identify things, it’s so satisfying!

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March 20, 2023 Hannah Mulvany Blog No Comments