Young people’s relationships can have a huge influence on their mental health, and many young people struggle to find the advice and information they need. Fumble is a digital platform run by young people for young people to provide information on sex, relationships and mental health. Their team of talented volunteers includes young media, education and health professionals. Here, Fumble Director and Co-Founder, Lucy Whitehouse tells us more about the platform, and how they would like to work with researchers to develop and share evidence-based content for young people.
Fumble is a digital platform that offers happy, healthy content on sex education. We create content with young people, for young people on intimacy, relationships, identity, mental health and wellbeing.
We know young people (we are young people!) use the internet to ask questions about health, sex and relationships, and a lot of content currently available for this is not appropriate, safe or positive. We want to offer an alternative, excellent voice in the digital landscape, as a peer-to-peer educational resource.
Our beneficiaries are young people up to the age of 25 in the UK, of all genders, sexualities and backgrounds. Within this, we focus primarily on those aged 11-21.
We would love to be considered by academics in the TRIUMPH Network as consultants on research bids related to mental health, sex and relationships among young people. We can participate throughout research projects and are particularly interested in consulting at the stage of insight-gathering with young people, as well as consulting on resource creation for young people. We can also translate academic research into young people-friendly digital content formats, and similar projects like that.
Our mission and values
We make sure that young people have the skills and knowledge to successfully manage their sexual health and relationships today. We do this through co-created digital content, which is engaging, relevant, inclusive and diverse: created by young people, for young people.
We believe that all young people deserve quality, accurate education about sex, relationships and related topics. We cover related topics that are often overlooked in the provision of sex education, like mental health, LGBT experiences and rights, disability, and consent.
Our values are to provide information that is:
- Relevant & non-judgemental
- Inclusive & diverse
- Engaging & accurate
- Collaborative
How does Fumble do this?
We carry out two core ‘pillars’ of activity that mutually support and continually strengthen each other: our digital content and our co-creation with young people. Our co-creation with young people informs and constantly evolves what we do, putting young people’s voices at the centre of our content.
Related to these two core activities we have two aims:
- To be a top trusted resource for young people looking for sex and relationship education online.
- To involve as many young people in co-creating Fumble content as possible, from diverse and varied backgrounds.
We believe our co-created, peer-to-peer model of digital sex education has the potential to change young people’s lives. We know young people have the creativity, insight and drive to reject the current inadequate digital content available to them, and build Fumble to be a truly healthy, innovative and impactful alternative resource. We believe our co-creation model is the vehicle to make this happen.
Get in touch to find out more, get involved, or work with us: http://fumble.org.uk/
