Getting the Message Across – CAB meets You Tube

During 2008-9 young volunteers at Stoke CAB became active film makers to promote the CAB service to young people.

The first film ‘The right place to go’ was recorded during the summer using young volunteers to tell their peers how CAB can help them by acting out the role of CAB enquirers who have been helped by the CAB.

Funding from the v Foundation (a charity set up to encourage young people to volunteer) enabled the team to work with a local video production company (Capture 1), to script, film, edit and distribute the films. The film shows young people of how the CAB can help them to deal with the problems they face.

Stoke CAB Chief Executive Simon Harris said: “We have always helped a certain number of young people each year, but it is clear both locally and nationally that many young people don’t see CAB as the place to go for help. This video should help change that and show young people that CAB can help them with the problems they face.”

Buoyed by that success, in February 2009 the team appeared in 2 other films under the banner; ‘Advice changing young lives’, an HBOS funded project.

They worked with other members of the Citizens Advice Youth Forum and Bold Creative, a youth innovation company, to produce ‘Adila’s Story’ and ‘Scooby’s Story’ aimed at young people who are in debt.

Adila’s story is an animated film in which she admits to being a ‘shopaholic’ who has got into debt by ‘maxing out’ her student loans and cards. ‘Everything I see if I like it I have to buy it… the things I like to buy are shoes, bags and clothes in every colour.. It’s a vicious cycle I’m unhappy so I shop but because of the debt I get even more unhappy,’ she says.

Scooby’s story is a live action film in which Scooby tells us how his £1 overdraft turned into £600 due to bank charges which were added to the account. ‘I was getting lots of letters but I ignored them and put them in my bottom drawer’. This story is told using a series of animated characters, who illustrate the story that Scooby is telling; he is chased by a £600 pound-sign, haunted by guilt and finally helped to sort out his problems by a friendly CAB logo.

Youth Forum Co-ordinator Tina Mendolia says, ‘It was great fun making all three films, the young people involved were so enthusiastic and willing to try anything including dressing up in a CAB logo suit and yellow tights on a cold March day.’

The films are generating a following on You Tube with over 1600 hits on Scooby’s film and have had a great deal of media interest including a mention on the Observer and a Radio 1 Newsbeat interview. We are now distributing the films to bureaux up and down the country and who are using them as part of their financial capability training in schools and colleges.

All three of these films are available to watch below: