'Kindness is Key' Speech Wins Speak Out Challenge

HFEH Mind Youth Advisory Board Member Toby Yates crowned Grand Champion

Toby Yates (second from right) with is award. Picture: HFEH Mind

July 15, 2024

The Jack Petchey "Speak Out" Challenge Grand Final was held on Monday 8 July at the Cambridge Theatre, London. Toby Yates, a Fourth Form student at the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial RC School and HFEH Mind Youth Advisory Board Member, crowned Grand Champion with his speech 'Kindness is Key'.

He has been a core member of HFEH Mind Youth Advisory Board since 2022 and was directly involved with the creation of the Circle, HFEH Mind’s Children and Young People’s Youth Hub Space and Café.

The competition, sponsored by the Jack Petchey Foundation and run by the Speakers Trust, works with schools and colleges across London and Essex to promote communication skills through expert led workshops and coaching. Each one of these students receives an all-day public speaking workshop from the UK’s leading public speaking and communication charity, Speakers Trust.

During the training, students are given the skills and the confidence to develop and deliver a competition speech on a topic that is important to them.

The programme, which aims to amplify young voices, is funded and supported by the Jack Petchey Foundation. A speech contest is held at the end of the one-day course and each school selects a speaker to go through to a Quarter Final (37 students become Regional Champions from each borough and area of London and Essex). From those 37, 15 are then selected to go to the Grand Final.

Over 33,000 year 10 students took part in the initial programme and Toby was part of the final 15 selected at the semi-finals that spoke on the evening at the Cambridge theatre and was chosen by a panel of judges, including award-winning author Jamila Gavin and Martin Forde, KC as the overall Grand finalist.

The Cardinal Vaughan Memorial RC School English department worked alongside the organisation to host a day of sessions where every student in fourth form were given the opportunity to ‘speak out’ to an audience about a topic they were passionate about. Four were chosen to present their speeches in front of the year group and two were selected to represent the Vaughan at the regional finals, one of those being Toby.

Toby said afterward, “I feel absolutely amazing. It still feels so surreal. Part of me thinks it isn’t actually happening. Big thanks to everyone who came, it was really great to see all the people that came to support me!”.

Ms Mullen, Deputy Head of English and Inclusion Co-ordinator at Cardinal Vaughan said, "On behalf of the English department, I would like to congratulate Toby on his wonderful achievement and look forward to planning with him how his prize fund for the school will be spent supporting all students in the Vaughan community in developing oracy and public speaking skills through a series of projects and poet in residence programme. I would also like to thank Ms Drury who coordinated our involvement in the programme this year." -

“Huge congratulations from us here @hfehmind! We are immensely proud of Toby who has been a core member of our Youth Advisory Board since 2022 and is one of our trained young advisors who supports us with recruitment, events, and panels. As part of our Co-production team, Toby was directly involved with the creation of the Circle, our Children and Young people’s Youth Hub Space and Café in Ealing and supported the youth-led sports workshops at Masbro that took place in spring

Children and Young People in West London can play a pivotal role in shaping the future of mental health services by getting involved in HFEH Mind’s Youth Advisory Board, by simply getting in touch with its Youth Co-production Team (get-involved@hfehmind.org.uk).

You can find out more information about the Circle crisis café here.

Find out more about HFEH Mind here.