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Snow Camp’s Youth Forum is one of the most powerful parts of our charity. But it is perhaps least widely known to those outside of Snow Camp. While many people know about our core snowsports journey, from First Tracks to Excel, and our award-winning Apprenticeships, fewer people realise what happens next.
Behind every Snow Camp programme is a growing community of alumni leaders who return through the Youth Forum to support, mentor, and co-deliver our work. They’re young people who’ve completed their own Snow Camp journey and are now helping others take their first turns.
This blog explores how the Youth Forum works, the scale of its impact, and why it’s a vital part of our mission to create long-term change. If you support, partner with, or fund Snow Camp, this is a behind-the-scenes look at the community you’re helping to build.
The Youth Forum is open to young people who have completed our full programme journey. Once they finish the Snow Camp Excel course, they’re invited to return. Not just as alumni, but as active volunteers, mentors and ambassadors.
This approach creates something powerful: a sustainable, peer-to-peer legacy. Youth Forum members come back to the slopes to guide new participants, provide encouragement, co-deliver sessions, and support the smooth running of our programmes in each region.
They also help with fundraising, event planning, public speaking, and representation at industry events.
With guidance from our team, the Forum gives alumni real responsibility. And as a result, we create a space where young people lead the next generation of Snow Camp participants, not just follow along.
Snow Camp has always been built on connection and the Youth Forum ensures those connections last. It also unlocks one of the most powerful tools we have: peer-to-peer support.
When a new participant arrives at their first Snow Camp session and sees someone just a few years older, someone who’s been through the journey, understands their challenges, and has come back to give support. It makes a huge impact.
Hannah, our 2024/25 Youth Forum Peer of the Year, as voted by her fellow Youth Forum members, puts it perfectly:
“Joining the youth forum was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. It has given me so many amazing opportunities, allowed me to connect with people working in the industry, and enabled me to support the next generation in becoming the best version of themselves.”
Peer mentors help build trust, boost confidence, and encourage participation. They offer practical guidance, emotional support, and a sense of belonging that can’t be replicated by adult staff alone.
This model works. It’s authentic, relatable and deeply empowering for both the mentors and the participants they support.
In the last year alone, Youth Forum members volunteered an extraordinary 10,827 hours of their time. That’s a huge leap from 3,164 the previous year.
That figure represents more than just hours. It’s thousands of moments of encouragement, hours spent helping young people gear up, hundreds of group sessions led, countless conversations during challenging times, and consistent presence from people who genuinely understand.
These volunteers are not just assisting; they’re co-delivering. Their presence allows us to reach more young people with greater depth and care.
To every supporter reading this: those hours wouldn’t happen without you. Your funding, encouragement and partnership directly enables these opportunities. For example, in the Midlands, funding from The National Lottery Reaching Communities covered transport costs for our Youth Forum volunteers. This enabled Youth Forum volunteers to help deliver First Tracks courses for 248 new young people.
That’s the kind of impact your support makes possible. Removing barriers, expanding access, and ensuring young people feel supported from their very first Snow Camp experience.
While Youth Forum members are giving back, they’re also gaining vital skills for life. Each young person develops experience in:
This development is part of our long-term approach because we believe in creating not just short-term opportunities, but life-changing outcomes.
Many Youth Forum members use their experience as a springboard into further training, education, or employment. And now, thanks to our new Snow Camp Futures programme, those next steps are more supported than ever.
Launching this year, Snow Camp Futures is a new initiative that supports young people aged 16+ into employment, education or further training, both within and beyond the snowsports industry.
Futures offers:
Together, the Youth Forum and Futures create a complete pathway from first time on the snow with First Tracks, to securing a job or training placement. This is how we create lasting, transformational change.
What the Youth Forum shows is that Snow Camp isn’t just a charity that delivers programmes. We’re a community. A movement of young people helping each other grow, step up, and stay connected to opportunity.
If you support Snow Camp in any way – as a donor, partner, funder, or friend – this is what you’re helping to build:
Thank you for believing in this work, for helping us keep young people at the heart of everything we do, and for making it possible for our alumni community to thrive — and help others do the same.
If you’d like to support the Youth Forum or Snow Camp Futures, please get in touch. Together, we can help even more young people turn their first experience of snow into a lifelong source of confidence, purpose and possibility.
