During the Autumn term of 2020, which was disrupted by lockdown, 50 teachers from 18 Liverpool schools attended teacher training workshops. These where delivered as part of Ariel’s Grassing or Grooming programme.

We are currently working with Merseyside Youth Offenders Service (MYOS) on a resource focused on ‘Decision Making’.  Ariel worked with a number of young people within the MYOS system before the lockdown to help create the scripts and learning activities, this allowed us to make the resource feel accessible and truthful to the audience. 

Ariel is again working with our partners from the Evens Foundation to translate one of our resources, this time for use in Germany.  We are working with new German partners from planpolitik to translate and refine the ‘Skills to Resist Radicalisation’ resource for use in a German context.

Ariel has been working in partnership with Wirral MBC to engage teachers in our programmes for a number of years but this year’s teacher training events faced a new challenge – bringing teachers from different schools together during the pandemic.  The solution, as has frequently been the case during 2020, was Zoom!

Ariel’s digital literacy project ‘Building Resilience in an online world’ had to be adapted to fit in with the new way teachers are having to educate young people within the current social climate. We developed a remote program that allows teachers and pupils to follow an animated version of our project officer Rachael Mutch through a six week project around the theme of ‘Lockdown’. 

Who am I: Rachael Mutch, Project Officer for Ariel Trust’s new digital literacy project ‘Building Resilience in an online world’.  About the Project:

Ariel has recently piloted new resources aimed at tacking the growing challenges of the criminal exploitation of young people. 

Ariel Trust is a small charity developing educational resources to help primary schools tackle on-line bullying and exploitation. We are seeking new trustees with an interest in primary schools, distance learning technology, forum theatre or marketing and communications      What will you be doing? We are looking for new trustees to join our Board, a person with energy and enthusiasm and a background in any of the areas listed above

Ariel is pleased to announce a new three year project funded by the National Lottery: Communities Fund. Our project will support young people to fulfill their potential by enabling them to explore the impacts social media is having on their lives and empowering them to take control of these impacts before they have significant negative effects. Creative workshops will focus on developing young people’s digital literacy skills and resilience online, building skills such as risk assessment or developing critical thinking.

Ariel’s SafeSkills resource is delivering important behavioural changes that are supporting schools to safeguard their pupils. Positive impacts can be seen from a recent evaluation of our grooming and sexual exploitation programme. In all of the schools involved in this trial, teachers reported that children were more open about their existing risk taking behaviour, especially the risks they take on line.