Stambassadors – Inspiring Young People To Think Big About Their Career

Young people face a barrage of tough decisions throughout their teenage years: which GCSE’s to take, which A-Levels, which university to attend or apprenticeship to start. At Action for Stammering Children, we understand that those choices pile up and can be tough for any young person, so to add a stammer to the mix can at times feel overwhelming.

Over the past year we have been coming up with creative ways to help young people navigate their way through the more difficult transition periods in their lives. Whether they’re moving on to secondary school, university, or their first job, we want young people who stammer to take every opportunity that comes their way.

Thanks to the invaluable advice of our fantastic Youth Panel, we wanted to start a project which would help young people who stammer feel more confident about two major decisions in their lives: their education and career choices.

And so the idea for ‘Stambassadors’ came to be.

We believe that every child deserves a fair chance in life, and our aim is to make sure children and young people who stammer are given the same opportunities as their peers. The aim of Stambassadors is to connect people from the world of work who stammer with young people who stammer to learn about their job, their career, and if relevant their stammer, sharing their stories and inspiring young people to think big when they are considering their career choices. We are also in the process of growing the idea into Stambassadors University, where students can give invaluable advice on starting university with a stammer.

Our plan is to record short videos of people from a variety of industries and backgrounds speaking about their job and why they chose that career. As Stambassadors grows, we hope to hold networking events bringing together people from the world of work and young people who stammer to speak directly with them about their career plans.

We believe young people should not be held back by their stammer and our growing line up of Stambassadors are here to show them that they should shoot for their dreams. So far we’ve filmed Editors, Solicitors, Academics, and Speech and Language Therapists to name a few, but we want to hear from more.

If you are someone who stammers and would like to help young people achieve their potential, please get in touch with us at [email protected] and let us know:

• Your name
• Your job, position and organisation you work for
• A bit about yourself and why you’d like to be involved!

To find out more about Stambassadors and to see our first videos, please follow this link.