Tess Vandenberg

Job role: My role as Active Young People Lead is to support system change to enable the best outcomes for young people age 10-25 to be more active in order to support all aspects of life. This includes funding a number of projects while ensuring that they are youth-led ensuring the engagement of young people in the activities.

Date joined: November 2020

Professional background: After trying out many industries such as design work, finance, amongst many others I started volunteering in the outdoors with young people with additional needs. This led me to retrain, graduating from Worcester University with a foundation degree in learning support then topping up with an education degree. Both of my dissertations focused on activity or sport. This lead to almost ten years working in a variety of settings with children and young people. Including specialist behaviour Teaching Assistant, care homes, youth work, outdoor instructing but all mainly focused on behaviour, SEN or NEET needs along with designing and delivering a number of youth work projects.

I have a particular interest in youth voice, equity for all and enabling young people to have the confidence to self-advocate. This and my own passion for being active and outdoors as much as possible lead me to volunteer and work with a number of different charities. Having worked on, designed and delivered youth projects for the last five years, it made it clear to me that hearing people’s stories so they feel valued is the best start we can give them. Both professionally and personally I love to hear people’s stories. I work in a very open collaborative way and enjoy making connections and building networks of people with the same shared goals.

Fun fact: I once told Keith Allen off for swearing and have driven on the top gear track.