Recognising the impact of COVID-19 on our young people has become LifeLab’s new mission. We may not be able to open our labs up physically to help empower young people to make positive lifestyle choices, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do that virtually.
Right now we are pulling together all our expertise, knowledge and resources to help support our young people through this difficult time. We are already running a series of online forums as part of a live research project to discover the impact of the pandemic on younger generations. We hope this will help inform policy makers on how to get messaging across that resonates with young people but also give real insight into the effect of cancellations of exams, closure of schools and isolation is having on teenagers, particularly school and college leavers.
Read more about that work here.
We are already hearing a clear message from our young people about how they are struggling with the lack of purposeful activity, an unclear pathway to their next step and lack of interaction with society. 
As a result we are now making great links with new partners to try and link up the young people with opportunities that are already out there… and here is one of them:
The Southampton Hub, an organisation that ordinarily supports students to volunteer in placements in the local community, is running an Active Social Media campaign this month. It involves a week long challenge campaign on social media beginning on 27 April.
The idea is that young people can take part in a series of physical challenges and post them on their social media accounts. Each day a volunteer is needed to present a challenge via video or text and are inviting young people to submit their suggestions to be in with a chance of being featured.
Example challenges include ‘do 20 star jumps’; ‘do 5 push ups’; ‘throw a ball up and clap as many times as you can’; ‘throw a paper ball into a bin from as far away as you can’.
You can get as creative as you like! If you would like to be involved with the campaign you will need to send in one of the following options by Friday 10 April:
Either:
– a motivational quote, a video of you outlining and doing the challenge with a written transcript
or
– a motivational quote, a photo of you and text outlining the challenge which we can make into a graphic
or
– a motivational quote, a photo of you and text outlining the challenge which we can make into a graphic
For more information on how you can submit your suggestion, please visit the Southampton Hub website here.