Campaigning

Why we campaign

We want to make a long-term difference to communities.

Our campaign work helps us to do that by adding value to our funding programmes and partnering with those who also want to build future fair and co-operative communities.

We believe co-operation is at the heart of strong communities and is key to generating meaningful change. That’s why we are working with others who put young people and those with lived experience at the heart of their campaign work.

Our focus for campaigning

Over the next two years, we will focus on adding demonstrable value to bold and innovative national and regional campaigns looking to make lasting change in the following three areas:

• • Safety

• • Prosperity

• • Health and wellbeing

In line with our wider funding work, the campaigns we support will embed two ‘golden threads’: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Youth Activism. The first will be achieved by supporting campaigns that are driven by underserved communities with lived experience of the issues we are trying to tackle. We will achieve the second by setting up a group of young advisors who will help us deliver our campaign function.

Read an overview of our campaign strategy here.

We will have more to share about our new campaign work as we develop our campaign function throughout 2023 and 2024.

Sign up to our blog below to stay up-to-date with our campaign updates, partnerships and how you can get involved.

Our campaign heritage

We’re not new to campaigning.

In 2019, we launched our first youth-led behaviour change campaign, Lonely Not Alone, to tackle the stigma of youth loneliness. We wanted to help young people feel more confident talking about loneliness to improve their mental wellbeing and deliver on Co-op’s vision of Co-operating for a Fairer World.

At its peak, 25% of young people in the UK had heard about our campaign, and there are now hundreds of stories and messages of support on our beautiful digital universe that was co-designed with young people in 2021. We had impact too:

• • In November 2022, 55% of young people said loneliness is a normal emotion (up from 43% in February 2019)

• • In November 2022, 83% of young people said they’d taken an action to help others (up from 73% in February 2019)

We will stop promoting our Lonely Not Alone campaign at the end of 2023. Read more about our Lonely Not Alone campaign and its legacy here.