Youth Voice: Positive Stories (October 2014)

Youth Voice: Positive Stories October 2014

Make Your Mark Ballot papers- Doncaster Youth Council

Youth Voice: Positive Stories A report by youth representatives and the workers that support them October 2014 Welcome to the October 2014 edition of Positive Stories. Our format reflects part of our commitment to the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child Article 13 - Freedom of expression ‘Every child must be free to say what they think and to seek and receive all kinds of information, as long as it is within the law,’ (UNICEF UK).

The British Youth Council will share this report regionally and nationally, with local councillors and MPs, and certain media outlets, in order to raise the profile of the fantastic local work that we know is happening every day.

The case studies and stories of the work of young people in their local communities are reproduced here in their own words. If you would like to find out more about one of the projects you read about in this report, please email: mail@byc.org.uk The online survey remains open and we produce reports once a month, providing young people the opportunity to shout about the great work they have been doing in their local areas during the previous month. Previous reports are available online: http://www.byc.org.uk/ukwork/youth-voice The British Youth Council would like to thank all the workers and young people who took the time to promote and complete October survey and we look forward to hearing more from everyone over the coming months.

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Contents Young People’s Stories East Midlands East of England London North East North West South East South West West Midlands Yorkshire and Humber Northern Ireland Scotland Wales

4 6 10 20 25 28 30 38 41 53 54 55

Support Worker Stories East Midlands East of England Yorkshire and Humber

56 58 60

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Young People’s Stories

East Midlands Leicestershire Rina Roy, 17, Member of Youth Parliament This month has been one of the busiest and the best, with “Make Your Mark” and “Convention 2”. On Saturday 11th October it was the day we all been waiting for MYM results! It was a great end after working extremely hard for Make Your Mark gaining over 858,000 votes across UK, which was an amazing result! I would like to say a huge well done to Leicestershire team for achieving over 11,000 young people to vote. I would also like to say huge thank you to Nicky Morgan for being part of this and supporting me throughout, and was trying to get schools and colleges to be involved in Charnwood Borough to be part of this amazing campaign giving young people voice. I went to six schools and colleges and youth groups and have done presentations and held a ballot box and this was a great way to encourage young people to get involved in democracy.

In Charnwood Borough I managed to get over 3450 votes and overall Charnwood borough achieved over 4000 votes. Hopefully next year’s Make Your Mark should be a lot easier now that I have direct contacts to get into schools and colleges. Thank you to all the Youth Workers and teachers who were interested in this and was part of it, giving their young people a voice. I really enjoyed the activities in convention especially the non-verbal communication work shop, it was also great to see everyone again and come together as a Super Region. Now ready and excited to debate in HoC next month with the top five issues voted in, taking away all the skills and knowledge that learnt over the months from UKYP.

Rutland Lauren Taylor, 17, Member of Youth Parliament We have currently just finished our annual campaign this year which was Transport , we focused on getting cleaner and safer transport in our area. We got in contact with our county council reps and the transport companies and held a meeting with them. After a successful

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meeting we now have a smaller focus group on the county council working with youth and the bus companies as well as trying to bring in a county recognise age card to stop age discrimination against the younger generation (looking older and not being able to prove they should only pay a child fare). In the coming month we are having our election weekend where we elect a new chair and vice, then will be focusing on our new campaign.

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East of England Central Bedfordshire Elisha Fowler, 14, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament On Friday 5th October me and the other MYP and the chair of my areas YP we went to a meeting with the North East MP Alistair Burt about Make Your Mark and the other issues we are working on. The meeting was a great success and I really enjoyed it.

Colchester Jakub Makowski, 17, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament October saw the wind up of the most stressful campaign of the year, Make Your Mark, and we have done fantastically well. Every single person whether they got 200 or 2000. I was very pleased with my result this year which was just over 3500, which means that it was an 80% increase from last, it also means that I know more people, have more contacts and links in schools which means that I will be able to organise Make Your Mark even more effectively.

Hopefully, having improved so much this year we will hit 1 million next year. I know we are capable of doing it.

Hertfordshire Ahmed Al-Maadanli, 16, Member of Youth Parliament Going to BYC conventions is a great time but actually organising them, well it's a whole different world but I enjoyed it more. Through months of planning and Skype calls it's so nice to see everything come together and to see so many people leave with more skills to help them than when they came in.

By far the most enjoyable bit of the day had to be the honour of reading out the MYM results.

The atmosphere was electric with excitement and with the national results over 850,000 they had a right to be. It just shows how we can all come together, put behind our differences and reap the benefit of knowledge.

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Anand Mistry, 15, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament Over my summer holidays, I have successfully managed to contact many local Watford borough Cllrs and most of them have shown support for votes at 16. Though the help of one Cllr, Stephen Johnson, I managed to get the article in the local paper. With the advice of the MP, I managed to get the article in a local magazine, also publicising the campaign.

Emma Flude, 16, Member of Youth Parliament Since our first meeting last year, Chorleywood Youth Council members have aspired to putting on a music event for young people in our area. We hope that it will help engage teenagers more in the community, and encourage them to get involved.

After months of research and the difficult task of finding funding for the project, we were offered ÂŁ300 by O2 Think Big to run the event.

With the date set and venue hired our project is well and truly underway! It will be called CASA (Chorleywood and surrounding areas) Rocks, and will see singers and bands play for the chance to be voted the audience's favourite and win a slot at a local recording studio.

Something really important we had to consider was the safety aspect, but fortunately Youth Connexions who are supporting us helped organise those aspects.

We're really excited, and hope to see as many 11-18 year olds as possible there! It will be a really enjoyable event and we hope this will be the first of many youth council projects to come in our area!

Nia Powell, 13, Member of Youth Parliament On the 5th September, I went to see my local MP, Mr Prisk. The meeting started off by discussing what I did within my role in the Youth Parliament, and then we talked about the manifesto Herts UKYP write, using evidence from the surveys we collect earlier in the year, to show what young people want. I then asked Mr Prisk if he would come into my school and answer questions from the students about what he does, and how Parliament works. He agreed, and so we are now in the process of arranging a date for the meeting!

Reece Browne, Member of Youth Parliament I love being an MYP, I am so passionate about all the work we do.

Becoming an MYP is a great process, I went to a Hustings event and recorded a one and a half minute video and a still was also taken from the video. I also had to write a small description ( I had already wrote a very long one so it took a while to wilt down). Unfortunately at the time I 7

was not elected and of course it saddened me. Six months later an MYP unfortunately had to step down I was offered the position and of course I accepted. Being an MYP is all about talking to young people and looking at ballots that young people filled out and then figuring out what young people want most and trying to make that happen. It is amazing being an MYP because you get to work with some fantastic young people and work together, you make friends with them after a short while. Everyone has great opinions and while we do of course concentrate on the work we sneak a laugh in every once in a while. I can say without doubt that so far my experience has been positive and I am certain it will continue to only get better.

Norfolk Harvey Monck, 16, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament I am Harvey Monck, one of the Norfolk Member’s of Youth Parliament. As a group, we have been working really hard over the last few weeks to encouraging young people to vote in Make Your Mark and for youngsters around Norfolk to get involved in politics inside and outside of school.

We had written to all schools (27 got involved) in the county and involved youth groups and friends. The hard work paid off and we received 19,338 votes. This is an amazing achievement for us, but also for the young people of Norfolk. In 2013 we picked up just over 6,000 votes so we’ve managed triple our total from last year and hopefully this will continue to rise for years to come as youth parliament becomes more recognised for the work we do as an organisation.

Convention 2 was a very big pat on the back for the Norfolk MYPs, we battled hard to earn a grand total of 18,000 votes by triple the amount from last year! Showing how dedicated we are to the young people in our area and showing the widening support for youth parliament we have!

Suffolk Natasha Graves, 17, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament This month I finished conducting assemblies about Make Your Mark and managed to collect over 1,800 ballot papers, which is an 800 increase on last year. I also attended the BYC convention 2, and stood for debate lead in the House of Commons, although I didn't get elected I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the other debate leads and practicing my public speak skills. At the convention I also lead a discussion about mental health with a group of youth representatives. I explained to them some of the basic facts about common mental illness and then asked the group to come up with ways in which people can spread awareness of mental health issues and ways in which we can improve mental health services.

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As my role as the co-chair of my sixth form Student Union I have facilitated a meeting with representatives from each form group and have collected their views regarding the food, social space, environment and charity at sixth form. As part of my school Amnesty International group we have recently encouraged our sixth form to take part in 'Spirit Day' in which members of the sixth form wore purple to show their respects for the LGBT young people who are bullied in schools. On the day we also sold cakes in aid of GLAAD and Suffolk LGBT Trust raising over ÂŁ100.

Erika Spall, 16, Member of Youth Parliament So far this month I've attended BYC convention two and presented my votes with a total of 1000+ . Great achievement, whilst participating in MYM I've analysed people's views and will be getting evidence and finally I've been invited to attend girl guiding to talk about youth parliament.

Toby Jeffery, 16, Member of Youth Parliament Recently my efforts have been largely concentrated on a youth forum that I have started in my town. The Bury St Edmunds Youth Forum has now had two meetings, featuring distinguished guests including former minister Lord Norman Tebbit and former Party President Baroness Scott of Needham Market. We’ve also had a very positive local media reaction. The forum is open to all local 11-18 year olds who are interested in their community. As well as this, I have been involved with plans for a Youth Question Time event in Stowmarket, which is in my constituency, as well as starting a video project to dissuade young people from smoking.

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London Barking and Dagenham Faraz Hanif, 18, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament We have worked on getting as many MYM ballots filled out as possible. We did this by working alongside the local youth council by giving the ballot papers out to local youth groups and schools. We also attended the youth parade in which we publicised MYM and got hundreds of young people to fill one out. We managed to get more than 3,000 ballots filled out which is a personal best for this borough.

MYM has publicised the Youth Parliament significantly in this borough and now more young people are aware of our roles. One of our priorities was to get the UKYP more publicity in the borough and we feel that getting the MYM ballots filled out was a step in the right direction.

We hope to work on publicity more so that next year we can get more ballots filled out.

Stephen Abordo, 16, Member of Youth Parliament As part of the "curriculum for life" journey myself and other young people within the Barking and Dagenham (B.A.D) Youth Forum are in the process of putting together a film which teaches PSHE, mainly focusing on the sexual health and contraception for the time being. We have visited the sexual Health clinic conversing with the staff and other qualified personnel, making enquiries and also going through the procedures involved when young people are requesting for contraception etc.

The month of October has been a very busy but also very productive month; myself and other young people within the Youth Forum worked hand-in-hand to get the views of young people in our borough represented through the amazing wonder of the "Make Your Mark" ballots. We worked tirelessly as a team to make sure we got the views of as many young people as possible by visiting local police cadets, youth groups, secondary schools etc. In the long run, we succeeded in gaining over 3000 (doubling last year's Make Your Mark results.)

This only goes to show that young people within Barking and Dagenham do indeed have a voice, are concerned and very much interested in political related issues as well as expressing their opinions when giving the opportunity to. As a borough we are happy to have been a big part of the successful MYM journey.

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Brent Hamza King, 16, Member of Youth Parliament Bren Youth Parliament has been busy organising our national campaign to lower levels of youth unemployment in Brent (Create Your Future). We have been busy preparing a fair that will take place on the 28th of October to give young people a better chance of finding employment in the future!

Camden Hannah Morris, 15, Member of Youth Parliament Make Your Mark! The hard work finally paid off. Well done to the youth council and the schools for getting involved. Together Camden reached and exceeded our target of 2800 achieving a total of 4065! A huge improvement from the 300 last year. Keep up the good work Camden.

The new work has already started with a meeting today planning take over day.

Counted 1000 Make Your Mark ballots today alone and we've got much much more to do. That goal is in sight! Camden is making its Mark.

Today I had a meeting with a local councillor Georgia Gould who is also in charge of the young people of Camden. It was very productive, we worked out which were our main issues and what our plan of action was. She agreed to help with MYM and email all of the Headteachers in Camden and we also agreed to organise monthly meetings.

Ealing Ashvarya Madhani, 15, Member of Youth Parliament Since I was elected on 27 February 2014, I am one of the two MYPs for Ealing. My 3-point manifesto included; votes at 16 for young people in all elections, free 16-18 tube and bus travel cards and to increase levels of community cohesion in my area. As part of my 'Votes at 16' campaign, I signed up to the Votes at 16 coalition and gave an interview based on the 'Kenny Report' regarding votes at 16.

The interview was broadcast in Parliament, where a meeting was held for the Lords. A recent success that young people can benefit from is Labour's promise in their Labour conference in September to give the vote to 16 year olds, if they win the next general election in June 2015.

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Furthermore, as part of my manifesto point for community cohesion, I delivered an educational lesson based on the issue of 'Community Cohesion' along with some of my friends to a Year 8 Citizenship class. My aim was to increase awareness of community cohesion within young people, about what it is, the importance of it and upcoming local events in Ealing, in which they can get involved in. This lesson was very successful because prior to the lesson, a very limited amount of students in that class knew what community cohesion is, but at the end of the lesson, the group has a wider understanding of what is meant by 'Community Cohesion'. Thus, this was my initial change action for promoting community cohesion in the local borough.

As part of 'Make Your Mark', Ealing's pledge was 10,000 votes, yet we managed to smash our target and consulted over than 14,000 – this is a great achievement in itself! Furthermore, I attended the UKYP Annual Sitting this July, which was a wonderful experience, as I got the chance to meet MYPs all over UK and they were all amazing people. Besides, I have gained a lot from attending the sitting, as I was able to further strengthen my public speaking skills as well as my debating skills and I learnt about a lot of new issues that young people are passionate about e.g. bringing back English and Math exam re-sits.

In August, I also participated in a meet and greet photo session with the Minister for Civil Society MP Brooks Newmarks and it was great to see that he displayed an interest in youth politics and was passionate to promote it further, in association with the Education Secretary, MP Nicky Morgan. Hence, I felt truly motivated having witnessed the engagement of politicians with young people and how much they care about our views.

I have been very active in representing young people in my area and I hope that I incorporate an effective change within their lives and continue to represent them in the best way possible.

Enfield Maya Caddle, 18, Member of Youth Parliament October has been a Make Your Mark month for me! To make the actual process of completing MYM ballots more inclusive and involve as many young people as possible I had sessions with 2 of our Area Youth Forums and together we went into Enfield Town to get ballots completed. I 12

was also able to secure 3 schools (along with the usual schools which we target) which have never been part of the MYM process. It is always important to provide young people with the result of your actions and so I wrote an article for 'Enfield Magazine' (which is distributed to over 30,000 homes as well as sports centres and libraries across the borough of Enfield) regarding Make Your Mark in Enfield, and nationally, and its successes.

For the second half of this month I have been focusing on how to improve my local youth service and make it more efficient and cost effective in the face of cuts. Whilst Enfield is fortunate as those responsible for the cuts in our borough recognise the importance of youth consultation and has always had an active youth service, nothing is perfect and it can always be improved. I hope that by the time I leave Enfield Youth Parliament (EYP), myself and my fellow EYP members will have Made Our Mark on Enfield!

George Frith, 17, Youth Representative Hi there, My name is George and I am the chair of KRATOS - Enfield’s ‘Children in Care’ Council.

We have taken the name KRATOS, which is Greek for power, as we want to be involved in development of the care service in Enfield and help others in care to achieve their full potential.

The Diana Award rewards young people who inspire the lives of others just as Diana, Princess of Wales, did. Earlier this year I was the proud receiver of a Diana Award for my campaign work to raise awareness of our new group.

Now I am very proud to announce that all 16 young people, aged 5 - 25, who make up KRATOS, received a Diana Award too.

The award in the Community Campaigning category recognised our efforts to launch Junior Kratos, produce a DVD for children in foster care and our encouragement and support to get others in care involved in social action who can then make a difference to their lives of others in care.

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Our group is getting bigger and stronger, especially Junior Kratos which organises sessions aimed at facilitating the voices of young people in care and their siblings aged 8 -13 years old.

We are also very pleased with the DVD we made for children in foster care too. This helps to inform them of their rights, entitlements and the services that are available to them.

We feel we can offer our ideas with confidence to the council, knowing that we will be heard.

We are very excited about this award. To find out more about our exciting group KRATOS and to see the DVD film clip we made visit www.enfield.gov.uk/youth/kratos PHOTO caption: KRATOS members: George Frith, 17, Sarah Miller, 24 and Conor Doyle, 18 collected certificates from Ray Lewis and Tessy Ojo in the picture with Peri- Louise Revan from Enfield Council.

Greenwich Kim Emenike, 17, Member of Youth Parliament Hello! My name is Kim Emenike, I am the MYP for the Royal Borough of Greenwich. This month has been an exciting month for Greenwich, we managed to get 3,333 young people to participate in Make Your Mark which is nearly triple the amount of young people that participated in 2013! I am very proud of all my fellow youth councilors that participated. Also we managed to get into the Greenwich times (local newspaper) TWICE, this month. This is a huge improvement! In addition to this, Greenwich Young People's Youth council had a very productive meeting about setting up some life changing projects in our local borough! We have also been busy, planning a student conference that should be occurring in January!

At the moment we are discussing ways that MORE young people can directly get involved in our youth work, youth council and in decision that we make! We will also be running elections soon!

Hackney Ife Grillo, 16, Member of Youth Parliament This year, I wanted Hackney to smash Make Your Mark. I've been working on our strategy since last year and I was ready, I am so proud to announce that Hackney got over 12,000 ballots filled out which is a 67% turnout! Hackney Made its Mark.

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I've been involved in my local youth parliament for years and it means the world to me. It's sad to say that my time is now up as I handed over the responsibility to a new youth parliament group this month but I'm sure they'll be fantastic.

Hammersmith and Fulham Rahima Begum, 17, Member of Youth Parliament At my local youth forum we have been discussing potential outreach projects around out borough, trying to promote the youth council to young people and to also get there feedback on youth engagement in the area. I have also been planning parliament week at my school with the headteacher, I will be holding a debate everyday of the week, and also two events call speak out where young people and the teachers will talk about what inspires them and something their passionate about, we are hoping to get MP's, councillors etc. involved in judging the talks.

Harrow Ravhi Karia, 15, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament After spending hours on make your mark, achieving our boroughs best ever turnout of 50%, we had planned a very exciting event. A youth conference with a speech and a Q&A from exLondon mayor Ken Livingstone. This was a great experience as he talked about how to get involved in politics and his experiences.

Zak Wagman, 16, Member of Youth Parliament This month has been a rather exciting one. We kicked it off with the 'Harrow Youth Parliament Youth Democracy Event'. This was an event held in Harrow for young people to hear about and discuss youth engagement in politics. We held round tables with a number of keynote speakers - Ken Livingstone (Former Mayor of London), the Deputy Leader of the Harrow Conservatives, the Director of Education, ShoutoutUK and two Vice Chairs of BYC. The event was a huge success and at the end of the evening, myself and my DMYP announced Harrow's Make Your Mark result.

We polled 10,584 young people which is a hugely impressive total, as it is

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over 300% of our scoring last year and also represents a higher turnout than at the recent council election. In addition to this, we presented the 'Harrow Youth Parliament Make Your Mark Champion Trophy' to our member who collected the most ballots. Later that week was BYC Convention 2, where a delegation of 5 were sent from HYP. It was a fantastic event, hearing from keynote speakers, and learning about the UKYP House of Commons Sitting. In the 'unconferencing' session, HYP ran a very popular and productive session on how to run a youth parliament. Finally, the highlight of the day was the Make Your Mark results, complete with a PG flash mob, which really showed off the fantastic work that the Youth Voice and the UKYP have done.

Havering Tolu Akingbade, 15, Member of Youth Parliament Through September (and a bit of October), I was frantically emailing and calling schools to try and get them involved in the Make Your Mark Campaign. It was hard and exhausting but I managed to get a few schools to agree to do it and even went in to a school to talk about the MYM Campaign.

Votes also came from youth clubs in which we put the ballot box and ballot papers there for people to fill in. It was great finding out the overall result of the campaign and that London got the most votes which Havering contributed to! It was amazing seeing how many young people care about these issues and interesting to see what the top issue for Havering was, Work Experience, which fits into one of the pledges that I was elected upon.

Newham Saadia Sajid, 16, Youth Councillor This October, Newham allowed 16 candidates to run for 'Young Mayor of Newham'. The turnout for the election after 3 strong weeks of continuous campaigning was peaking at a 71% turnout - this was absolutely incredible! Due to the hardwork and dedication the teachers, schools and students put in to advertising and campaigning on the streets, the Young Mayor and Deputy Young Mayor were announced on the 22nd of October 2014. During the campaigning process, there was tough competition, but myself and 10 other Youth Councillors were the 'Election Champions'. We guided the candidates through their campaigning journey and equipped them with the knowledge, expertise and energy to go out and build a successful campaign. With 1596 votes as an end result, it was noted by the Mayor of Newham to have been a record in the country for Youth Elections.

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Newham is extremely proud of every single young person that was engaged in the process and it reflects the passion young people have in Newham that they were able to have their input into the democratic process. It was truly a pleasure to witness such great manifestos and I look forward to working with both the new Young Mayor and Deputy Young Mayor to make Newham a better place for young people to work, study and live in.

Richmond upon Thames Jack Lewis, 17, Member of Youth Parliament The Make Your Mark campaign has been a huge success in Richmond, with all the members of the Richmond Youth Council (RYC) and UKYP members collecting 2,132 ballot papers, up by over 800 ballots on last year's total. Some of the most popular issues on Richmond's ballots include work experience, the minimum wage for young people and mental health.

Jack and Camille (MYP and DMYP) attended BYC Convention 2 in Pimlico. They attended masterclasses on various subjects, including a very good workshop on 'how to run a local youth parliament', hosted by Harrow Youth Council. They also took part in a national consultation on sexual health services and Jack stood for the Debate Lead role. Both will be attending the House of Commons Debate on 14th November. All the Borough's UKYP members have been promoting the Community Awards to young people in the borough.

Historically, it has been almost entirely adults who have received rewards, and The UKYP members want this changed. They are also helping to prepare a question and answer session with Council leaders in November. The RYC is currently running several youth projects. One of these is a peer research project regarding NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) young people. Many interviews with NEET young people have already been completed, with the aim of the project being to propose improvements to unemployment services. A focus group will be taking place on Thursday 30th October.

The Emotional Health and Wellbeing group of the RYC have recently planned and delivered a workshop to youth workers and young people. The aim of this workshop was to educate the participants on the problems faced by Young Carers and how these can be overcome. The workshop was a well received and the group now has a template workshop for future use. The RYC has also completed a consultation with London Funders and is now considering a project proposal from HealthWatch Richmond. If it were taken on, the project would focus on using young people's views to improve CAHMs services in the borough.

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Wandsworth Wandsworth Youth Council: So much for a lethargic October, this month the Wandsworth Youth Council has been as busy as a humming bird with two tails.

Some of our youth voice adventures include: 1. BYC Pimlico Convention 2 Where we: 

 

Facilitated a Police Problem Solver consultation with 30 young people, exploring barriers, outcomes and mapping our way to reduce crime and improve confidence between the young people and the police.

Used our interview skills to quiz the key note speaker Natasha Deven.

Participated in a student voice session, where we leant how to pitch our campaigns, publicise effectively and share good practice.

2. YOF – Short listing and Presentation Evening We had 20 YOF applications in the last round asking for £52,115.69! Young people are asking for funding for music workshops, key skills, celebration events, residentials and emotional wellbeing classes. Shortlisting was tough, but we did fund £14,000 of youth projects this round.

Round 5’s deadline is fast approaching (04 November), so young people in Wandsworth starting filling out those applications!

Check out last year’s YOF report here: http://tinyurl.com/LBW-YOF2013 3. Wandsworth Youth Service Contract We consulted 4800 young voices in January to ask young people how they feel about Wandsworth Youth service. Since then, we have advised the Commissioning Panel on what young people expect from the new providers.

Recently, we challenged all interested parties and assessed

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how they would engage best with other young people. So in short we were involved in a £2.6million decision!

4. Roehampton & Putney Student Parliament We ran a consultation with the newly elected Roehampton & Putney Student Parliament, exploring recent successes for young people in their area. We plotted how Roehampton and Putney can “Takeover” their school in this year’s national Takeover Day. Student parliament member (12) said “I am looking forward to shadowing someone this year and making a change to my local community”. #watchoutteachers

5. Coming up…

November hosts a wealth of activity for us, including:      

Youth Opportunity Fund – granting £25,000 to local youth groups Mental Health inspection feedback from decision makers on what actions they are going to take!

Planning for Takeover Day 2014! 50 young people and 50 decision makers are taking part in the Council. As well as, five schools organizing their own events!

Running focus groups with social services and child protection teams to look at how they involve young people in service design and delivery!

Presenting to the Safer Neighbourhood Panel about our work with the Police and young people…

Youth Council Chair Elections 2014-2015

Follow us @WBCYouthCouncil (Twitter) or @Wandsworth Youth Council (Facebook)

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North East Darlington Danny Brown, 15, Member of Youth Parliament An MP, a councillor and a police and crime commissioner shared the stage with a young parliamentarian at a Question Time-style event at a North-East school.

Year 10 and 11 students from Longfield Academy, in Darlington, got the chance to quiz public figures at the talk-in on Friday (October 17) lunchtime. The event was organised as part of local democracy week, which runs until Sunday (October 19).

Among the panellists was Darlington MP Jenny Chapman, Durham's police and crime commissioner Ron Hogg, Councillor Cyndi Hughes of Darlington Borough Council and Darlington youth parliament member Danny Brown, a student at Longfield.

Mrs Chapman said questions were asked about how politicians could better engage with young people. She said: "We were asked what could be done to make politics more exciting and I said the best way to make politics more interesting for young people is for politicians to be less boring."

Mrs Chapman has yet to make her debut on the weekly BBC Question Time programme, but has not ruled it out in the future. Cllr Hughes, the council's cabinet member for children and young people, said: "The questions that the students asked showed really great insight, they were exceptional. The great thing was that each of the panellists was able to answer from a different perspective. The young people were really confident and were able to come back with follow-ups once we had answered their questions."

Hartlepool Shay Miah, 18, Member of Youth Parliament Hartlepool has made history with 7591 young people filling out the make your mark ballot!!

Hartlepool could be the LA with the highest turn out in the country!! I give a massive thanks to

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all the schools, young people that took part in the UK biggest Youth Consultation!! And a massive thanks to Hartlepool Youth Parliament team and the local authority for their support and help in getting the voice of young people heard!!

So it was Local Democracy Week the other week where Hartlepool participation team and myself worked with the mayor to get primary schools and secondary schools involved in democracy!! The secondary schools and colleges took part in a ballot for their top issue which they wish to debate on the Children’s Commissioner’s takeover day! Where a panel will form and questions will be asked by young people!! But before the 21st November Takeover day!!! It House Of Commons!! It will be an honour to represent the young people in my constituency and to make my town proud!!

Newcastle upon Tyne Mariam Pamsm-Conten, 17, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament During this time period I have been working for the bigger organisation and getting the UKYP ballot boxes filled in. In a number of different school and we were very successful. I have also been helping locally with the Newcastle youth council elections.

Neil Kotre, 15, Member of Youth Parliament The coming of October marked the end of a long drive in Newcastle to increase participation in youth democracy. Last year, less than 1,000 young people in the city participated in the UK Youth Parliament's annual Make Your Mark ballot. Time, I thought, to change this. So cue the music, commence the keyboard-whacking and pour another cup of Earl Grey. One unremarkable desk of many in a most remarkable city became a hotbed of activity, as schools and youth groups were consulted to participate in the consultation to ensure that as many voices as possible were heard.

And the result? A rather good one, nearing Newcastle's target of around 4,500 responses and smashing the previous year's total. At the regional convention earlier in the month, the North East's net increase of tens of thousands of ballots spoke for themselves. It's a tremendous achievement that we can all be proud of.

North Tyneside Adam Hunter, 13, Youth Councillor Helped make decisions involving things such as the event.

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Alex Harrison, 12, Youth Councillor On 27th October 2014 some members of North Tyneside Youth Council attended the Young Civic Award Expedition. For this we had to walk for four hours at The Rising Sun Country Park in Benton. As well as just walking we had to include an educational element, for this we were shown around the farm by Graham, he showed us all the animals and he told us lots of information about the produce that they produce.

Daniel Doran, 14, Youth Councillor On 27th October, some members of the North Tyneside Youth Council along with the Young Mayor, Allen Oghene attended a Tea Dance organised by Age UK North Tyneside.

We spend the afternoon in the company of some Senior Citizens and talking to them about their memories of the Spanish City dome. It was an enjoyable afternoon for all that attended.

Isaac Sidney, 16, Youth Councillor On 11th October I attended a talking day at Northumbria University. At the event there were other Young People and members of U3A. We debated and discussed voting and how technology is changing the face of Politics. It was especially interesting speaking to members of U3A about their experiences of politics and how politics had changed over the past decades.

From this talking day I will be attending a debate at the House of Lords. The day was a fantastic experience for all involved and developed my communication and debating skills.

I recently attended the Labour Party conference with BYC. I was one of two representatives for North Tyneside. While there we discussed and debated issues with Labour MPs and Shadow Ministers. This will help shape their 2015 manifesto regarding Young People’s issues. It was fascinating to gain this experience of witnessing a Party Conference and also to help shape future potential government policies. It was also interesting to find out the views of other Young People from across the country and find out the campaigns they are working on in their own areas. This was an invaluable experience.

Jess Sproat, 17, Youth Councillor On Friday 24th October some of the Youth Council attended and took part in some debate training which was run by Young Minds. This was a brilliant evening which helped us to build our confidence in public speaking. Lori and Zoe came up from London and were joined by Ben from Durham to provide us with tips as to how to write a speech about how to form an engaging speech. We all enjoyed this event and learnt some key skills.

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Rebecca Moore, 15, Member of Youth Parliament Myself and another young person (Rebecca Railton) travelled 3 hours to London to an Alcohol Policy Youth Network UK (APYN UK) strategic planning meeting which I chaired as General Coordinator. Law students, medical students, young radio DJs and members of APYN Europe attended the meeting and we have set out plans of starting a program involving University Students talking to High School Students about the effects of alcohol. A logo was selected and website/ social media designs were discussed. By the next meeting in November, our website will hopefully be up and running. We will keep you updated.

Make Your Mark is going brilliantly in North Tyneside. We have already had over 3000 ballots back (above our target) with more expected in the next week. We have had a very positive response from the schools with just about all of them participating. We emailed out resources we created a few weeks ago and have set a competition on who can collect the highest percentage of votes in the region. Everything is beginning to fall into place with schools wanting the top position in North Tyneside. Well done North Tyneside Schools!

The North Tyneside Young People's Health & Wellbeing Reference Group has written a report and completed an audit on Mental Health Education. We attended MindFull Training in which we were verified as online MindFull mentors and travelled to York for training in the YoungMindsVs Campaign.

Our report and audit will be presented to decision makers like the adult elected Mayor and North Tyneside's Director of Public Health. We hope to create an education pack for schools to use to teach Mental Health to students and to ensure every young person knows about this important issue.

Northumberland Annabelle Cooper, 17, Member of Youth Parliament October is always a big month in the UKYP calendar as it illustrates the end of Make Your Mark.

The Duchess’s High School had their first experience with Make Your Mark at the start of the month, and it is safe to say I couldn’t be prouder of my fellow students. 755 young people got their voices heard with Living Wage certainly in the lead. As this is my first Make Your Mark I am confident we will top the ballots next year!

In addition, Northumberland has triumphed with over 700% increase compared to last year and 3,336 young people getting their voices heard. An immense improvement on 2013 and we’re certainly going to increase that number for next year!

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Along with the Make Your Mark announcement, convention 2 was also amazing in many other ways. MYPs and MSYPs attended which was great to meet them. Also, I delivered my WW1 commemoration speech which was definitely scary but I am thankful to everyone for the support. There is only one more thing left to say now. 22 days to #ukyphoc!! Cannot wait!

South Tyneside Emma True, 15, Member of Youth Parliament This month, myself and a group of young people attended the House of Commons to launch a manifesto about child poverty. At the launch, MPs, decision makers and young people attended to listen to the work our campaign Poverty Ends Now does and what we have set out to achieve in our 6 manifesto points to end child poverty in the UK. Decision makers and MPs were well involved in the launch by answering questions from the campaigners and young people who attended and were available to talk to after the event had finished. Local newspapers such as the chronicle and gazette produced articles on the event making the launch very well received both by decision makers and close to home.

This month myself and a group of young people from South Tyneside attended a Mindfull training day. The workshop in York informed us on how to campaign about mental health and in which ways were most effective in doing this. We looked into other campaigns and what mindful do already to promote their cause on spreading the importance of mental health awareness (online etc.) Because my group and I found the cause so important we all pledged to spread the word in individual ways and are now more aware of how to get people involved in the important work of Mindfull and the fantastic way they manage to spread the word from their campaign to us then us to our LA's.

Sunderland Brian Terry, 15, Member of Youth Parliament We concluded make your mark voting nationally. Within our city we had worked incredibly hard as a team to beat our target and we did. We counted the votes and then gave the totals to BYC. We then attended a regional meeting to find out about the regions results (which were above target) and do additional follow up tasks. All in all, the event was a great success for Sunderland City, the North East and UKYP as a whole.

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North West Liverpool Ciara Brodie, 16, Member of Youth Parliament On Sunday 28th September, I went down to the ICC in Birmingham to represent the BYC in the Conservative Party Conference. I spent most of my time in the 'Youth Zone' where there was a question time with Nicky Morgan MP, Education Secretary. We talked about higher education fees, actively engaging with young people and a curriculum for life among other things.

In addition, I participated in a panel discussion where our very own BYC Chair, Mita Desai, was a panel member! It was a fantastic day and fascinating to talk to decision-makers who have a lot to do with my day-to-day life. There was also a multitude of different stalls where I wandered round and learnt about organisations right across the board. I also enjoyed sharing the experience with other BYC members and BYC trustees. It was a great day and a unique experience!

Salford Laura Edwards, 16, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament As it was the 2nd issue from 2013's Make Your Mark, Mental Health was adopted from Youthforia as a Salford Youth Council campaign. SYC are aiming to have posters placed on the back of every single toilet door in Salford schools. This way, young people can get information about who to speak to when help is needed, without anyone else knowing. Working with children's services, we're going to help implement a much needed mental health policy, across all the schools in the city. By encouraging school councils to work with our campaign, we are hoping that each school will be able to launch different schemes tailored to need. We are hoping to have all changes in place for January 2015, ready for decisions on our new campaign at our AGM in February 2015.

Sefton Laura Curran, 16, Member of Youth Parliament With October being the last month of Make Your Mark, I was very busy getting the last few of my ballots and tally sheets filled in and counting them all as well. With this being my first year

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having a role within UKYP, this was the first time I got involved in Make You Mark. Bearing this in mind, I am very happy with the 1,039 votes I managed to get myself. This helped Sefton achieve a total of over 3,500 votes. The most voted for issue in Sefton was Living Wage, second being to bring back English and Maths resits, and third being Mental Health. The most popular option for the North West was also Living Wage, which was good to hear because this meant the views of the young people in Sefton coincided with those of the whole of the North West.

The total of votes for the North West was a staggering 146,223! From this figure, it was not surprising to find out that the North West region got the highest total out of all the regions, proving once again that #NorthWestIsTheBest.

I, along with many other MYPs, were delighted to find out that the total number of votes cast for the UK was 869,461! I feel extremely privileged to have been part of Make Your Mark this year and I am majorly excited for the House of Commons debate on 14th November! If only I could decide what to wear for such a special occasion...

I have already emailed numerous schools and groups that were involved in Make Your Mark this year to inform them on the statistics and results; I will also be feedbacking them to Shout It Out Sefton, the youth cabinet for Sefton that I am Chair of. This will allow us to evaluate how we did and how to improve to get a greater turnout for next year.

Warrington Deputy Member of Youth Parliament We got over 4800 votes in make your mark – 2250 more than last year. We met with senior decision makers to discuss our projects for the near future. We attended Youthforia.

Wigan Grace Thompson, 17, Member of Youth Parliament September Positive Story: Wigan Youth Cabinet have been busily planning their next major event – a Robin Hood themed Health event at Bispham Hall. The aim of the event is mainly to gather information from young people about their views both on health in general and health services. It will also give us a chance, as Youth Cabinet members, to interact with the youth of Wigan through activities such as archery, nightline, problem solving, river crossing etc. We have been working in partnership with the Wigan Clinical Commissioning Group and Healthwatch, who have been very helpful both with suggestions and funding. They hope to take the opinions of young people who will use a video booth to make comments about health services. They will then consider these opinions and act as they feel appropriate.

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Whilst the majority of our time has been spent in planning the Health event, we have had time to continue shadowing our local councillors, attending various council meetings, surgeries and generally getting to know the councillors better. We have really enjoyed this opportunity. The “Make Your Mark” launch was a success, with one of our two MYPs – Alice Wilcock – featuring on Wish FM radio station. We are now going into school assemblies and colleges to tell young people about the “Make Your Mark” campaign and encourage them to vote on the issues that matter the most to them. Several members of our Cabinet have also shared on social media the online link for voting, so we hope that this has also produced responses.

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South East Brighton & Hove Thomas Soud, 17, Member of Youth Parliament During September we have been mainly focused on Make Your Mark in Brighton and Hove. We have emailed and sent letters to all Schools and Colleges in Brighton and Hove and have contacts in 11 of the 14 schools and colleges in the city. 8 of them are already in the process of getting ballots. 420 ballots have been given to Roedean School, 500 to PACA, 700, to Varndean College and assemblies have been given in Brighton and Hove High School. On top of this many ballots have been sent to a variety of different Youth Groups and I intend to phone schools that have yet to reply to either the letters or emails I have sent.

I have met with the staff in my college and have been given a stall in the enrichment fair to hand out ballots and will be walking around during lunches and free periods to try and get a large proportion of the 2500 people who attend. I have also had an interview with Latest T.V (Brighton and Hove’s local TV channel). The interview will be airing the week starting the 22nd and should help raise publicity about the Make Your Mark campaign in the city.

Isle of Wight Will Matthews, 16, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament I have been invited into my local radio station, as part of their 'Friday Report' because they believe I am part of 'Island Life'. I feel so proud that I have made such an impact on the community! I will be on with the CEOS of a local water sports charity, and a local executive councillor.

As the MYP, I was invited to the first IOW Anti Bullying conference, run by the IW Council and the office of the PCC. It was really great to hear the views of so many different young people, and their strategies of how to deal with bullying! There were workshops from the local police officer for schools, the children's society, and Barnados. There were 40 schools represented with 80 young people attending! Plus the Assistant PCC, the superintendent for policing, youth workers etc. I was interviewed by the local paper, and it should be out next week!

As young people on the island are generally misinformed when it comes to young people, I am part of the way through a new project to get them involved. We are going to have a live, round table interview with all of the GE candidates for next year, discussing what they will do for 28

young people if elected next May. I have already met with one candidate, and have meetings in place with two others. The local college has offered use of their conference hall. The youth branch of the local paper have been really supportive and offered their support!

Kent Member of Youth Parliament For Make Your Mark, I have been collecting ballots in my school. I have greatly improved my confidence and amplified the voice of young people in my school!

Angel Layer, 17, Member of Youth Parliament This month marked the end of Make Your Mark and as tiring as it was, I teared up a little when I had to say bye to the ballots that I'd collected. For Kent, Make Your Mark's target stunned me to begin with (25,169) however, when the results came out I was so so happy to have found out that we got over 10,000 votes in comparison to last years 3000(ish). So I'd like to firstly thank the young people of Kent for getting involved. As well as that, this month we had Convention 2 in London.

As a Kent MYP I ran a workshop called 'How to work the corridors of power' this was so enjoyable and it was nice to show other young people in representative positions what we do over in Kent. October has been a busy month in Kent with the end of MYM and the beginning of Kent Youth County Council elections, but looking forward to the month ahead with Parliament Week, House of Commons for the MYPs and lots lots more.

Milton Keynes Adam Rolfe, 18, Member of Youth Parliament I have attended the 4th and final meeting regarding MK's future at an event called MK 2050.

This is where all decision makers come together to discuss the sustainability and environmental friendliness of the city. It has allowed the representatives of all the Youth of MK from Youth Parliament and Youth Cabinet to put across their ideas on what should be done as they will be the generation who will be inheriting the city in 2050.

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South West Bath and North East Somerset Ed Joseph, 17, Member of Youth Parliament This month has been a great month in B&NES with regards to youth parliament. After involving 8 local schools and several local officials we managed to achieve 4,518 votes in Make your Mark which is an increase of over 2000% on last year’s 210 votes when there were two MYPs for B&NES. In B&NES, the old deputy, George Aylett, has celebrated his 19th birthday, and so has unfortunately left us, but every cloud has a silver lining and Beccy Thompson, 16, is now DMYP for B&NES. I have written press releases for both. I met with a local young person who has big ideas for little B&NES and created a survey that I will circulate amongst schools to find out the desire/need for his ideas. I met with our worker to write a speech for debate lead, but unfortunately was not elected.

Best of luck to Francesca. I met with a local councillor to discuss local issues and the youth forum and I were consulted about whether there should be a skate park in Bath’s Alice Park.

I was nominated to sift through applications to be the locally trusted organisation for Radstock’s big local project and after meeting William Legge MEP at the UKYP SW regional convention, I arranged to meet with Bath UKIP candidate, Julian, and have arranged to meet with Lib-Dem Candidate, Steve, who hopes to replace Don Foster MP.

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Cornwall Tia Joslyn, 16, Member of Youth Parliament This month I have been hugely active with the young people in my constituency by encouraging them to have a voice - by filling in the make your mark ballot papers. Within my school I talked to all young people and UKYP and what it was, and how the top five issues will be debated in Parliament. All young people I encountered were enthusiastic about doing this, and enjoyed deciding which issue they felt was the most important. They relished having a voice - and they took it seriously. I took the ballot papers to workshops I went to during this month and that was a great way of finding young people who could fill them in.

I loved doing MYM as you are actively giving young, underrepresented people a say, which otherwise they may not have had. I was delighted with my total and was hugely impressed with the national total. Next year I am confident we will surpass a million. I am excited to attend the HoC event in November, and am eager to see which issue will win.

Dorset Grace van Zyl, 14, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament After last month's manic mayhem with Make Your Mark this has been a fairly relaxed month.

Yet I have represented DYCE (Dorset Youth Council Enables) and UKYP at a Transport Forum scenario day where a group of bus drivers and Young People got together for the day to tackle the negative stereotypes and unrest between each other. This involved 5-6 relevant scenarios where the bus drivers and Young People 'swapped shoes' to see what difficulties the others face. These scenarios were carried out on one of the buses that the company First Buses supplied for the day. On the way out to the bus, half of us tried on some customized glasses to mimic the conditions of a blind person: tunnel vision, side view; the side effect if you don't treat diabetes right – black splotches and completely blind.

Did you know that only 4% of people with vision issues are totally blind? Myself and DYCE also attended the South West regional meeting... go SWESTIES! This was extremely interesting with an immunisation workshop, a fun and fact filled youth employment activity; a question time panel that got very interesting between the UKIP representative and the Lib-Dem representative and a grand reveal of the South West's Make Your Mark result! With over 70000 votes collected we almost doubled the score from last year! Adding to the monumental national result of 869461! Unfortunately we didn't quite reach the 1 million we were hoping for but we absolutely smashed last year’s just under 50000!

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James Jones, 14, Member of Youth Parliament Throughout the month (September), I have been getting involved in the Make Your Mark Ballot Papers. The Make Your Mark (MYM) is the Youth Parliaments way for young people to help contribute into the decisions, which will help adapt society. The Youth Parliament will come together to debate and decide at the UKYP House of Commons sitting the most important issues to campaign on for the year ahead. I collate this information by delivering ballot papers to schools that wish to take part in getting their voices heard nationally. The ballot papers have a list of issues which have came up across the country as important. Your pupils will be able to decide on 1 of these issues per ballot. For example: To lower the legal voting age to 16, Fund youth services...

I also have attended the Young People’s Transport Forum meeting in Dorset County Council in 24th September. We discussed the further developments and reflections on our projects. For example: The Training Course for Drivers which consisted of getting young People from various schools and meeting with other drivers, where both parties will give there honest views about the other and what they could improve on… As well we spoke about the Personal Travel Budget. Because getting your children to school is ultimately a parents or carers responsibility, so the Personal Travel Budget is given to parents and carers of children with Special Education Needs who are eligible for free school transport.

On the 2nd of October, I took part in the Police Crime Commissioners Conference at the Bovington Conference Centre. Me and the other MYP’s of Dorset were invited to attended the conference and setup a stall about the Youth Parliament and about its campaigns because the Police Crime commissioner is keen to building up young people’s portfolio with adults, police and areas of concern regarding young people’s lives in Dorset. There were many people invited to take part in this event and setup stalls as well. Many of which were advising and cautioning about different subjects to the adults and young people alike. For example we had stalls about cyber bullying and social networking: discussing safety tips to secure your privacy… Over six schools were invited to represent their area with a few pupils, a variety of workshops were enlisted for us to take part in.

I worked in the ‘Legal & Lethal’ workshop where we spoke about legal highs, laws and regulations towards combating drug use. It was an informing and tough workshop. We had people in our group who have suffered the effects of drugs and legal highs and people who haven’t so we had balanced debates upon subjects. Going back to people who have taken drugs, legal highs and life changing risks – we had some guest speakers which gave monumental speeches about their past life of alcohol and drugs. They were very deep and optimistic and showed everyone an empathetic view of their lives. This event was a great example of positively publishing young people’s portfolios to adults and media groups within Dorset which is fulfilling my manifesto.

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Throughout the month all the MYP’s have started to receive back and collate the final ballot papers. On October the 9th I attended the Dorset Youth Council Enables (DYCE) meeting, which was our county’s deadline for our final ballots. In total I achieved around 1212 Make Your Mark Ballot papers.

The reason for our deadline was so that we were prepared for the upcoming South-West Regional meeting where the whole of Southwest will be collating the total of ballot papers. We did not sadly reach our goal of 1 million young voters but I’m glad to say we met the over 849,000 mark of young voters, with our highest voted topic to be debated in the House of Commons in November from Southwest being that the minimum wage should be £7.65 for all people per hour.

On Thursday 23rd of October, I attended the new candidate’s information day at Dorchester Youth Centre. This was where young people from Dorset schools were invited to get an idea of what the role and responsibilities were for a Member of Youth Parliament and hopefully become a candidate for the next year’s election. This is my second and last year as an MYP, I shall not be standing again next year. But I look forward to working with the new MYP’s throughout Dyce. The information day was a great meeting and over 14 young people attended. We had the press come in to take photos, which will positively publish what and how young people are getting involved with their local politics Jack Welch, 21, Youth Representative Having applied in May for this opportunity through an application on BYC, I was offered to attend the unique and, what I would believe to be, powerful experience of the 'Remembering Srebrenica' programme. The purpose of the organisation, which invites young leaders over the age of 21 to Bosnia-Herzegovina, takes participants on an intensely emotional agenda over four days in which we would explore the history and consequences of the Bosnian War throughout 1992-95. Having explored the capital Sarajevo on our arrival, which has kept many monuments in the aftermath of the longest siege known in any conflict, the party visited a number of sites, including The Tunnel Museum, where this would be the only place that existed as a lifeline for people in Sarajevo to potentially escape Serbian forces and for humanitarian aid to come through. Further to that, we also visited the newly appointed UK Ambassador to the country in his residence, Edward Ferguson, who talked of the growing political tensions that still exist in the country and the world's failure to prevent the massacre that would ultimately lead to the tragedy of Srebrenica. The discussions felt deeply relevant at a time when the world is still facing a number of similar challenges in countries such as Gaza and Ukraine. The most difficult part of the visit itself was naturally the drive into Srebrenica itself, which is a three hour drive away from Sarajevo into the Republic of Srpska, a separate entity from the Federation of Bosnia. Our visit would consist of a stop at the Podrinje Identification Project in Tuzla and the Identification Coordination Division (ICD) on the continuing identification of bodies since the

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end of the war. Both tours demonstrated the great enormity of the work to reunite families with the remains of lost relatives that were disposed of in mass graves. Over 40,000 of those were said to have gone 'missing' by the end of the war in 1995, with the work in the centre and databases still finding positive blood matches in relation to bone samples found. Later on, we finally visited the Memorial Centre in Srebrenica, which encompassed the vast number of headstones of those who fell victim in the genocide and were given presentations from the Curator, Hasan Hasanović, a survivor of the massacre himself and the Mothers of Srebrenica.

Many of those who were killed in the event in July 1995 were men and boys, resulting in a great number of family lineages being destroyed and a number of those to this day without complete remains to bury. Listening to their words gave no better reminder of how easy it was for ordinary and innocent people to bear the greatest brunt when hatred and intolerance within societies is allowed to fester without any form of intervention. It is to the credit of these women and the work of organisations like the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) that there is still hope in humanity when these awful crimes are committed. As young leaders, we have each made individual pledges to share awareness about our experiences and I will be working to write as much about my time in Bosnia to as many publications as possible, as well as working with Fixers to hopefully emphasise the importance of young people taking an active interest in learning around history and heritage. I can only recommend all young people, once they are old enough and feel prepared for what they may witness, to take part in the programme and learn about a part of modern history that feels wrongfully ignored amongst other periods.

Gloucestershire Callum Coles, 17, Member of Youth Parliament This month brought the Make Your Mark Campaign to a close, this meant that I have had to chase schools in order to get as many ballots collected as possible. Since then I have been concentrating on my fixers project and trying to raise interest for that. The website is now live, please take a look at www.whatwherewhenglos.co.uk

Plymouth Jon Cummings, 17, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament This month I've been working on a question time event for young people being held in Plymouth called Our Question Time as part of my campaign to engage more young people with politics, I've also been working on Make Your Mark in Plymouth along with Plymouth Youth Cabinet and the other MYPs and DMYPs.

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Sarah Staples, 17, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament The last month has been my busiest to date! With organising and chairing a Question Time style event with a panel of local decision makers including MPs and an MEP which was attended by nearly 100 young people. The project formed part of my campaign to engage more young people with politics and I was aided in this task by Fixers. On the same day, I also attended a conference on sexualisation, sex and relationship education amongst other issues facing young people today.

The conference held by my MP, Alison Seabeck, was the last in a series of confrences involving young men and women from the local area. I have also been completing MYM and speaking in school assemblies. This month has been one of my most rewarding as a DMYP because I got to engage directly with young people and speak to them about the issues that affect them the most, as well as to facilitate this discussion though Our Question Time and Make Your Mark.

Somerset Thrinayani Ramakrishnan, 17, Member of Youth Parliament This month I distributed make your mark ballots in schools in my area and collected over 700 ballots from young people. The results from my area were interesting as the issue which got the most votes were "to bring back maths and English exam resits" and the second highest was the issue of introducing a "living wage".

I also attended the BYC convention 2 and delivered an employment skills workshop that I have been working on as part of my campaign as an MYP which is employment for youth and giving young people the skills needed to stand out in the world of work.

I got great feedback from the workshop and am now planning to make my workshop into a concise booklet or pack which I am planning to distribute to local schools and youth clubs.

I also updated the twitter account that I run as part of my campaign which is called @youthofsomerset. On the account I tweet tips and advice as well as advice on workplace rights for young people entering into the world of work.

Swindon Deputy Member of Youth Parliament Make your mark concluded with Swindon getting around 3000 votes. I have been asked to do various presentations and attend various meetings in October and November. I'm also waiting for an Anti-Bullying poster so I can give my feedback on it.

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Ellie James, 17, Member of Youth Parliament At the Youth Parliament convention on the 11th the South West's results were released including the results for Swindon. We received over 3,000 votes after weeks of hard work and perseverance trying to get young people to have their say. The response was not only very positive, but it has been requested in a few schools that we run a Politics Day during Parliament Week to educate young people about politics and get them excited about being part of our society. I have started to plan this in detail with my own school looking at interesting ways to engage young people with politics.

In a week’s time I will also be joining Reading MYPs in Parliament to encourage even more young people to become aware of politics that relates to their daily lives. I won the competition for the South West to present a 90 second speech at the House of Commons regarding the 100 year WW1 commemoration. This was a huge success for me and I thoroughly look forward to it.

More locally, I am aiming to create a campaign to make young men more aware of the dangers of riding motorbikes due to a tragic personal experience.

Torbay Sam McCarthy, 17, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament Make your mark results were released this week, which was amazing, seeing everyone pull together and get 70000 votes is incredible, it was amazing to help out with this total. I can't wait to improve next year. We will be launching our youth discount card this coming month, with details being finalised at this moment. We will also be meeting the transport minister in the 29th of October; I will get some pictures to prove it ;) I love a good political selfie. Thanks to our PG for putting so much effort into the regional conference, and controlling the debate so assertively. I personally am also emailing the panelists if the aforementioned debate to express my own and everyone's gratitude to their support of UKYP and for their contributions to the discussions :) This month is the Make Your Mark month, I have been into schools in the effort to push for votes and to collect ballot papers. A launch date has been set for the Torbay youth discount card which shall be publicised onto social media and canvassed in the streets and on the beaches and on the landing grounds. Talks are being held with child services leaders to the end of promoting Youth Parliament among the council and with the mayor. Regional meetings are in production.

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Wiltshire Chloe Lintern, 16, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament Finally October has arrived which marked the end of Make Your Mark 2014, and I have never ever been prouder of the members of Youth Parliament, Make Your Mark champions and all 850,000 young people who took part this year. Wiltshire managed to get 15,000 ballots filled in this year and 13,000 from North Wiltshire in particular. At our South West convention, we looked at the campaigns that have been happening all over the South West and how well they were working. It was interesting to see the variety of campaigns that were happening all over the South West. We then moved onto looking at vaccinations and what we knew about them and where we could find out information about that and what info we should be told before taking them. After lunch we settled down for our question time panel, which was interesting to say the least, with questions around mental health, youth services and education for disabled young people. It was interesting to see what each candidate thought. To end the day was Make Your Mark results and the top topic within the South West was a living wage, and this was also one of the top 5 topics in the Country. Apart from that it's been a quiet month, as I was unable to attend the local youth council meeting but I heard it was very productive.

Courtney Pickering, 15, Member of Youth Parliament This month was the end of Make Your Mark for another year. Over 865,000 Young People voted in this year’s national campaign. A massive turn out with our top five issues decided for our House of Commons debate. Over the past month I have also been in part of a meeting group for the re-opening of our local Youth Center.

We are contacting people all across our community to ask them to help us by volunteering for our new youth group. Currently we have a small group that are promoting who we are and what we are doing and the group is starting to slowly increase. We will continue meeting and promoting until our group is large enough to begin running a local center for our Young People.

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West Midlands Birmingham Samuel Holmes, 18, Member of Youth Parliament This month in my work on Make Your Mark led me to have a meeting with Councillor Welds.

This was a particularly interesting and successful meeting, which led to him sending letters to the heads of all the local secondary schools encouraging them to take part in Make Your Mark.

This led to me delivering several assemblies on the issues of Make Your Mark, and also on why we should engage with the political system. Make Your Mark is useful for gathering information, but it doesn’t necessarily address the issue of alienation many young people feel toward politics. This is why I felt the assemblies were a vital to contributing to Make Your Mark.

After one assembly a year 7 student came up to me, and asked lots of questions about how he could get involved, saying he’d never thought he could be part of the political process. I felt that even if it only made people think more about their involvement in community, then they were worth it, but to see the response of this one person, made me proud of the work of the youth parliament.

Dudley Maisy Neale, 18, Youth Councillor This month at Dudley Youth Council three people from the youth service like the Head of Childrens Services, came into our meeting to discuss youth cuts in Dudley. We learnt that the decrease in the money they were provided with meant that some services had to be changed; such as the Universal youth club evenings and the detached youth workers in parks. They are going to come to another meeting and they want to set up a youth panel to help choose how they use the money they have. We have also started planning the Dudley Youth Awards, choosing what refreshments we are going to serve and discussing which medals and trophies we are going to have. :o) James Cain, 17, Member of Youth Parliament On Tuesday the 30th of September, James Cain, Vice Chair of Staffordshire’s Youth Action Kouncil (YAK) attended the official launch event of the North Staffordshire youth council for improving access to mental health services. The event was held at Newcastle-under-Lyme College and attended by many local young people wanting to get involved in shaping their mental health services. The youth council has strong links with CAMHS (the Children and 38

Adolescents’ Mental Health Services) and Changes (an organisation based around improving mental health services) A main concern for the youth council at the moment is the long waiting times young people have to deal with when trying to access help. Another key concern is the negative stereotyping of mental health issues in society and the pressure this adds to sufferers.

As Vice Chair of YAK James Cain invited the youth council to send representatives to YAK in order to get their voices heard across the county. This invitation was accepted and YAK is looking forward to welcoming members from this youth council to our meeting in October half term. Rhysha Gallo, Vice Chair of the North Staffordshire youth mental health council, said “Joining YAK will be a great opportunity to really grow our youth council’s influence on many key issues. We are looking forward to working collectively with YAK on key campaigns in the future.” To find out more about this project please email yak@staffordshire.gov.uk or yp@changes.org.uk Megan Collins, 16, Member of Youth Parliament Charity Success in Staffordshire!

At their last meeting, Staffordshire's Youth Action Kouncil (YAK) held their own Macmillan coffee morning after last year’s roaring success. Each member brought in their own homemade cakes ranging from small decorative cakes to replicates from the Great British Bake Off in aid of the charity Macmillan. Clarke, a member of YAK, said, 'It was fantastic to see everyone's amazing cake contributions and even better to see youth representatives support such a brilliant charity such as Macmillan.' After a cake auction at the end of the meeting it was revealed that £60 had been raised - thank you to everyone involved and a huge well done!

Walsall Charlotte Gough, 18, Youth Councillor I recently helped out at the Walsall Police pop up shop in the Saddlers Centre in Walsall. The purpose was to promote the Youth of Walsall and UK Youth Parliament, including its current campaign Make Your Mark. Although we were only allowed a metre from the pop up shop, the outreach to young people was good. We handed out leaflets and flyers and encouraged passers-by to sign the Activate Against Hate pledge and take part in the Make Your Mark Consultation along with other Youth of Walsall members and one of our MYP's Jade. Overall I enjoyed myself and it was a new experience for me.

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Warwickshire Agatha Hunt, 17, Member of Youth Parliament Thanks to the leader of Warwickshire County Council, 3 MYPs from Warwickshire were given the chance to attend the Warwickshire Means Business event. The MYPs met their local PCC, local MPs, the minister for Universities, Greg Clark, and Michael Heseltine, former deputy PM. The event included short speeches and most importantly the signing of the Warwickshire/Coventry business deal. Thanks go to the organisers, those who invited us, guests and Warwickshire County Council.

On the 9th September, Warwickshire MYPs and members of VOX (Warwickshire County Youth Forum) held a meeting in the county's council building, as they do every month. It was nice to see everyone after the summer break, some got a tan, others had grown a beard! The meeting was very successful and both campaign groups managed to get really into their action plans for the next few months. They were also lots of exciting opportunities for members of Warwickshire's Youth Parliament and VOX to get involved in, which we are always very pleased to receive!! AN EXCELLENT, POSITIVE MEETING THAT WE THOUGHT DESERVED A POSITIVE STORY. Annual Sitting was brilliant. Just looking back on it now, was amazing to see so many people who are so like minded in one place. The Big Vote debates were fantastic and I'm so happy I got the chance to speak. The workshops and keynote speeches were also brilliant and added to the whole amazing experience. It was also lovely to see so many faces I recognized from past UKYP publications, especially some from last year's DEBATABLE!

Worcestershire Katherine Bexley, 15, Member of Youth Parliament During August, Craig Bateman who is our Youth Cabinet Vice Chairperson visited the United Nations Office in Geneva as part of a Global Young Citizenship delegation hosted by the ContinU Trust consortium of Wyre Forest and Hagley Schools. The visit consisted of a number of meetings with representative from UN commissions and agencies such as UNICEF, UNAIDS, and the Economic Commission for Europe. Craig said "this visit to the UN Geneva offices was truly invaluable. Meeting with the United Nations Children's Fund reminded us of just how important it is that we are working to secure better opportunities for the next generation to lead healthy, independent lives on not just a local level, but on an international level too."

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Yorkshire and Humber Barnsley Anton Dobson, 14, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament Hi guys most of you have probably completed many ballots papers. I hope we’ve beat our target and also we have been really busy in Barnsley. All our youth council meetings have been planning it spending time at dinner break form and even after school planning it and trust me wait until you come to the Barnsley convention because we’ve got some fun stuff for you! I should have around 1000-2000 hopefully and well done to you all and also my group of young reporters is going to be now up and running as soon as I set it up so we will have a Barnsley Young Reporters group soon. We should have some pretty good ideas and also it will give other people the chance to join in getting their voices geared across social media, thanks for reading and a most kindly thank you and thanks for voting for me – Anton.

So October the 5th I travelled to Romania as part of my Archbishop of York Youth Trust Award, and worked with Cry in the Dark to help make a change to people’s lives in Romania, I knew this was going to be both physical and mentally challenging as the things that we saw were quite upsetting and distraught and then we physically went to people’s homes and provided them with support and love, these people whose homes we went to had disabilities, e.g water in the brain, Hepatitis B or Hepatitis A etc... we provided them with food water toys colouring books and games. We also met a family of six who lived of £60.00 a week and their house was in worse condition than ours, when it rained the part of the house would flood so we dug up the ground and made a concrete path and a guttering system for the family. This prevented floods in the house. We also lit candles to fundraise for Cry in the Dark.

To Make Your Mark a great congratulations to all for reaching a total of 869,461. We have all been working really hard and been committed into doing it, this year I managed to get a lot of young people’s voices heard in Barnsley, the way I did this is making a scheduled timetable and put my qualities and skills into action. But I am really proud to say that Barnsley got a whopping 11,244 votes this make it great to say that it is a privileged organisation I participate in. So this September and October we have been really busy, counting all the ballot papers, attending our youth council residential and also getting into contact with schools and others: for example, for anti bullying week me Chloe and Alex will be leading that with our teacher and putting in the anti bullying charter into it. We have also spoke to apprentices hub – they asked us if we should change it etc.. and we gave them some positive feedback to them. I feel really proud of myself for attending the residential because it took me 4 attempts to go on the abseil course and I feel

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I have made a big commitment there and challenged myself. I believe that we all should challenge ourselves to make a big impact on people’s lives.

Leah Harston, 15, Member of Youth Parliament I'm really proud of my constituency for absolute smashing our target of 8,500 ballots by completing a total of 11,000! All the hard work has paid off and we can definitely say we are one of the top constituencies!

Pegah Moulana, 17, Member of Youth Parliament MP Dan Jarvis made an astonishing speech today in our convention two held in Barnsley. His speech gave the young MYPs/ members encouragement in the path they have chosen especially to get their voice heard. By answering our questions it was shown that he is determined to address the young people’s concerns.

Barnsley Youth Council used their first week in October to spend in Dearne Valley residential.

This enabled the members to feel close to one another and be able to develop their team work skills. Staff were very helpful in managing the weekend and many skills were developed amongst us which helped.

Barnsley had the target of 8,500 ballots regionally and as result we managed to collect over 11,244 ballots and voice over 57% of our young people. This was a great achievement for my region and my youth workers worked endlessly to reach our target and uphold the stand of our LA in the Yorkshire and Humberside. Youth Councillors worked extremely hard to maintain their own personal goal with 11 of them being the young champions for Barnsley.

Robert Jennings, 15, Youth Councillor I attended convention two which my Local Authority had hosted. The chamber was full of motivation and aspiration of wanting to be heard. Workshops were excellent and very informative as I attended the EU workshop which opened my eyes into how EU operates and what organisations are included. I would love to have further workshops.

Shaun Hudson, 16, Member of Youth Parliament Today I had the chance to represent Barnsley Youth Council during convention two that the UKYP held in Barnsley. I felt motivated to see how the young people had such a great influence and ambition to make a change in their area! Personally this grown into an interest to stand again in March and grow to make a better change in my area

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Doncaster Charlie Lavemai, Youth Councillor This month, we had the opportunity to meet with workers from the Children's Commissioner whilst they were doing a consultation with groups from the Children in Care Council. We each were able to talk about what young people found to be the most important areas for improvement both locally and nationally, which included highlighting experiences that seem to translate across a number of friends.

I found this experience to be rewarding because it was a great opportunity to get our voices heard as part of a bigger programme - something that we strive to do as part of a collective British Youth Council.

Emma Spencer, 16, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament On the 11th October, I attended convention 2 which was held at Barnsley. I thoroughly enjoyed this day as the workshops were beneficial and I also got to see people I haven't seen for a while, so it was good to work with them again. I attended the workshop which gave you advice on how to use media, i.e. taking videos which could explain who you are and what your role is. I found this really beneficial as I learnt how to make it look professional. Because I was a youth councillor, I wasn't allowed to vote for debate lead or PG, but I enjoyed the debating workshop that I went to. It helped me increase my confidence in speaking what I think is right and my own views on different situations.

Georgia Wren, 17, Member of Youth Parliament On the 17th October, myself and Aysha met with our MP Rosie Winterton to discuss the latest results from our annual Make Your Mark consultation.

Our main topic of conversation was our top issues identified by Doncaster young people in the MYM consultation. Doncaster had a massive turnout of 7,425 this year which beat our target of 6,000 set by ourselves in July.

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While with Rosie we talked about how we could act upon campaigning for a working living wage for all regardless of age as this was the top issue that was identified and how we could start finding out what the main employers in Doncaster pay their employees. In the near future we hope to work with Rosie to contact employees in Doncaster and research what the overall wage is for young people in Doncaster.

Jasmine Womack, Youth Councillor & Member of Youth Parliament Wow what a journey. I joined the Doncaster Youth Council (DYC) in 2008 wanting to make a difference to my local community and ensure young people had a say in the town. As a youth councillor I participated in youth surgeries, meetings and helped plan and host the Voxpop event in Doncaster. From this I was elected an MYP for Yorkshire and the Humber for two years and attended the House of Commons debates twice while also hosting a convention in Doncaster. After my time as an MYP I stayed on as the Secretary for DYC. After turning 19 I was of age to leave but from my years of commitment I was asked if I wanted to stay on as a Mentor to train the new youth councillors. From my experience with the DYC and UKYP I got offered to work for a Yorkshire and Humber MEP as her apprentice and have had an amazing year in her office. But now it’s time to say goodbye.

From all of my hard work I have been accepted for an administration job at a law firm in Leeds.

It has been an incredible few years, I've made many friends, participated in many events and had such an amazing time. For those of you who know me it has been a pleasure meeting you and I wish everyone good luck to their future. Finally a massive thank you to Debbie and Linda my youth workers who have supported me through the years and survived the chirpy excitement and craziness of me (those of you who do know me will understand). With love, smiles and hugs. Jasmine.

Keiran Bennett, Youth Councillor CAMHS (Children & Adolescent Mental Health Service) attended one of our Youth Council meetings this week; they wanted to involve the Youth Council with writing their Mission Statement. They explained they had met with lots of different groups of young people so that they can ensure that their Mission Statement explains what CAMHS does in a clear and easy to understand way. We talked about avoiding jargon words that children and young people don’t really understand (like holistic) and we thought that the Mission Statement should not be too long. If a Mission Statement is too long we thought people would not really read it and then they won’t really understand what CAMHS is, who they support and what they actually do. It’s good that organisations involve young people and we were pleased that they listened to our thoughts and views. We think young people often see things from a different perspective to adults and we believe that children and young people can help to define things in a way that other children and young people can understand. We are looking forward to hearing from CAMHS and finding out what Mission Statement has been agreed for their service.

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Luke Dickinson – Doncaster Youth Voice I got to go to London for the day as part of my volunteering work at my local Myplace Youth Centre. One of the BIG Music Project’s show piece events took place at The Brewery in the heart of the city of London on Saturday October 4th. Over 1,000 young people, including many from Myplace Centres, travelled from across the country to this event.

The day was to look at opportunities for young people to learn about careers in the creative and music industries. I went with my Youth Worker to get ideas of how we can promote music opportunities and careers in our Youth Centre hubs in Doncaster. Ideas included providing opportunities for young people from playing music, working back stage and even make-up, promotion and marketing.

I hope to take these ideas back and run sessions in my Youth Centre by supporting young people and helping to deliver the program. It was also an opportunity to meet music insiders, and other music hub volunteers. The day was funded through the big lottery.

"I really enjoyed London, this was the first time I have been there, the buildings were great. Wow. I liked the tube a bit scary though. It was a great day, I also enjoyed the music at the venue and met some famous people, it was a really good experience"

Quinn Watson, Youth Councillor We had someone come to one of our meetings to speak to us about Mental Health problems and in particular about dementia and how it can affect people as they get older. Apparently one in three people over sixty five develop dementia and that figure is rising because we are all growing older. I learnt that there are many different forms of dementia and different symptoms; it’s not all about memory loss. As a group we agreed to raise awareness of dementia in our schools and help to breakdown negative perceptions, I think it’s really important that people learn about dementia and try to understand that it affects people in different ways. The meeting really made me think and I will try to raise awareness of dementia and be more mindful if I ever see an elderly person who appears to be confused.

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Leeds Charlotte Williams, Leeds Children’s Mayor My year as Leeds Children’s Mayor is almost over. In the last few weeks I have been involved in shortlisting for the 2014/15 Children’s Mayor. There were a lot of difficult choices to make and it took us 4 hours to read through all of the entries from the Leeds Schools but we managed to get our final ten who we think could all be brilliant Mayors. I got to meet the final ten at a ‘What to Expect’ evening. The evening involved explaining what the role of the Children’s Mayor is and giving a tour of the Civic Hall, including where they would go on finals night. All of the finalists seemed to be very excited and each hope they will win.

I was the ‘celebrity’ handing out an award at the Yorkshire Child of Courage Awards. It was an inspirational evening with lots of deserving young people. I gave the ‘Young Carer 13-18years’ award to Rosie King, who is not only a young carer for her two autistic siblings but also has Asperger’s herself and has recently been to America to give a TED talk about her Asperger’s. It was an honour to be asked to attend and be part of the awards.

John Wadsworth, PR Office Leeds Youth Council After a short break over the summer, the Leeds Youth Council already has a lot to look forward to. Firstly, we have had a massive drive for this year’s make your mark, looking to achieve our target. Also, we have begun our search for Leeds’ next Children’s Mayor, elected by Primary School students in preparation for the Lord Mayor’s events around Christmas. Finally, we are looking to expand our links with more local groups to ensure money is spent where it is most needed.

Nadia Saeed, Leeds Youth Council Exec Board Member My first Executive Board Meeting was on the 29th September for the Leeds Youth Council. It was exciting to be with the other members and discuss how to run the meetings. It gave me an insight into what this year was going to be like as a member of the LYC and has made me more excited for what is ahead.

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Isaac Grinnell, Leeds Youth Council Exec Board Member I attended my first LYC Exec Board Meeting on the 29th September, it was really fun and we got to make many decisions for future meetings and whether we should bring opportunities to other members in the Leeds Youth Council and which consultations should be undertaken at which meetings.

Tommy Schofield, Leeds Youth Council Exec Board Member Over the past month me and the other LYC members have been trying to boost the total of the Make Your Mark ballots for Leeds. I personally did this by speaking to a member of the Senior Leadership Team at school, and getting the word out to young people.

I spent two evenings with other LYC members, the Children’s Mayor and an MYP tackling the shortlisting for this years Children’s Mayor. We had 31 manifestos from year 6 students from around Leeds that we had to mark against a criteria. At the end of the two evenings we had our final ten which you are able to vote for on the Breeze website.

Josh Nasey, Leeds Youth Council Member Within our drama group at school we raised £100 for St George’s Crypt to pay for 100 homeless people’s dinner for the day.

Ben Harper, Leeds Youth Council Member I got 26 ballots for Make Your Mark and trying to get more before the deadline!

Josie Lee, PR Officer Leeds Youth Council October has been a busy month for me. I worked an open day at school. I got elected to be PR Officer for the LYC and I am working with a deputy teacher at school to create a council to inform him about teaching throughout school and homework.

Polly Foster, Treasurer Leeds Youth Council Within school I am heading up a go green campaign. Me and my team visited a community garden in Kirkstall to teach us ways we can make our school greener. We are currently creating

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a presentation to show in primary schools to encourage recycling and anti-littering. Also we are hoping to get the Leeds Rhinos involved!

I was asked to speak at an open evening about my experiences at Lawnswood school. The hall was packed full of parents, which was terrifying. However, my jokes were successful and it went really well.

Jude Mason, Leeds Youth Council Member At school I spoke at an assembly and emailed our senior leadership tam about Make Your Mark.

I have put a lot of time in promoting the Make Your Mark campaign to school and have 369 ballots completed.

Thea Smith, Vice Chair of the Leeds Youth Council I took part in the monthly Leeds Youth Council meeting and helped to influence the outcome of the NHS consultation. This was meaningful as it helps to improve services in my local area.

Ben Coyne, Leeds Youth Council Member From meek to musical: I’ve been talking to someone in the year below me at school who had been bullied previously. He has since made friends with people at Leeds College of Music and is now one of the headline acts for several gigs around Leeds. This is a really positive outcome for this young person.

Temple Newsam Learning Partnership: I am a member of the TNLP, which provides young people with a voice within the cluster. This is a really positive programme for the schools in the temple newsam cluster.

Francis Edwards, Leeds Youth Council Member In an attempt to promote Make Your Mark I handed out ballots across the politics classes and in total received 20 completed ballots to feedback to the UKYP on a range of topics. However, in doing this I have raised the profile of both the UK Youth Parliament and also the Leeds Youth Council.

The Children and Families Act – a young person’s view Recently we have been using this blog to talk about changes to services for children and young people with SEN and disabilities under the Children and Families Act 2014. We have started to make these changes happen in Leeds. As part of this we have launched our new Leeds Local

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Offer website which we’ll be developing over the months ahead, please take a look and tell us what you think!

You can find more information about this act here: http://childfriendlyleeds.wordpress.com/2014/10/15/the-children-and-families-act-a-youngpersons-view/

North Lincolnshire Devon Drakes, 14, Youth Councillor On Thursday the 28th of August 2014 myself and two other members of North Lincolnshire Youth council, were invited to the Department of Education building for the day to work with The Office of the Children’s Commissioner’s and other young people. Throughout the day we were informed of the Equality Act 2010 for schools and the protected characteristics of this act.

These include: Religion or belief; Sexual orientation; Age; Disability; Race; Sex; Pregnancy, maternity and breastfeeding; Gender reassignment. Also on the day we were involved in activities which went into more depth about the characteristics of The Equality Act and also how and this is, best shared with and communicated to young people and children to inform them of these laws.

Sam Proctor, 14, Youth Councillor Monday was obviously a fun day. The experience of visiting London plus a tour round the Houses of Parliament made the day. Getting up at 5 am was surprisingly beneficial; the train journey there was peaceful, but then again so was the journey back. The actual tour round Parliament was brilliantly concise - I learned a whole lot about the history of Westminster Abbey, my favourite things being the eroding of certain features of the building. The wearing away of the statue of Churchill's "lucky foot" and the mark of the monarch's messenger on the door to the House of Lords, traditions continued for hundreds of years, were very interesting.

So was having lunch in the Members' part of the restaurant with the MPs, Andrew Percy and Martin Vickers. The food was spectacular and so was the service. All in all it was definitely something to remember. Thank you for the experience Rob Waltham. Cheers, Sam

North Yorkshire Olivia Newton, 16, Member of Youth Parliament Since the beginning of this month we have had one last massive push at MYM and had a really successful result. At convention two I went for PG and won the election. I haven't stopped 49

smiling since. Personally this is a massive achievement, living in an isolated rural community opportunities like this don't happen very often, so I fully intend to grab it and never let go...

Until the end of my term anyway.

Steph Spaven, 21, Youth Representative This year's event returned to Carlton Lodge outdoor centre near Thirsk. The event saw 50 care experienced young people come together to take part in a fun-packed day of adventurous activities and provide feedback on their care experiences. The sun shone and the day was a great success! The day itself was organised and run by a team of dedicated young people who are currently members of North Yorkshire County Council's children in care council known locally as the young people's council. They are supported by James Parkes, participation, quality and standards officer. This year, young people were able to get involved with raft building, climbing wall, archery, high ropes and zip wire. The day was also supported by North Yorkshire County Council officers, NYAS advocacy staff and elected members. To find out more about the young people's council visit their page on this website, and why not 'like' us on Facebook www.facebook.com/youngpeoplescouncil or 'follow' us on twitter - www.twitter.com/ypcny.

Two young people from Team Street Stars, a youth group run for children in care in Scarborough, attended a 'Listen Up!' event with over 50 other children in care from across the country. They met MPs and policy makers showing the work they are doing to improve the care system for other young people. Listen Up! - organised by the Who Cares? Trust - gives young people in care the opportunity to tell MPs and professionals their ideas for improving the care system. A member of Team Street Stars from Scarborough said, "We had a fab time in London at the event and even managed to go to London Zoo too. Seeing other young people in foster care at this event has made me want to get involved in more things to do with being in care and also I would really like to join the young people's council." Fifteen local authorities, children in care councils and charities across England, Wales and the Isle of Man exhibited their work, which included videos, plays, art exhibitions, sports events, and mentoring schemes. Edward Timpson MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Children and Families, and young care leaver Dembo Drame both spoke at the event held at Church House Conference Centre in Westminster. Edward Timpson MP said, "Events like Listen Up! will ensure that children's voices continue to be heard, as well as remind those of us in positions of responsibility that their views should be respected."

Sheffield Laura Nutton, 17, Member of Youth Parliament This month was extremely busy for Members of Youth Parliament. Throughout this month and earlier, we have been increasing democratic participation through the use of Make Your Mark.

We have been going in to Sheffield City Centre asking young people their opinions, running 50

assemblies and going into Youth clubs. Running an assembly in my school was a fantastic opportunity for other young people to get to know me better and for me to develop my public speaking skills. Also, as this is the largest youth consultation, it was great to gather the views of so many young people – Sheffield gathered in total 10,351 views. Another integral part of an MYP’s role is to communicate with MPs. We therefore helped to facilitate MP Paul Blomfield’s youth consultation. My main role was to introduce MP Paul Blomfield and to close the event. I also helped facilitate a discussion with young people to find out their views about votes at 16, which was very interesting. Lastly, we went to BYC Convention 2 in Barnsley, where we received the fantastic results from Make your Mark. The MYP’s also voted for the debate lead and procedures group representative for Yorkshire and the Humber after hearing some great speeches. Overall, having a brilliant day and month.

Wakefield Adam Lofthouse, 16, Member of Youth Parliament This month my main focus as a Member of Youth Parliament was to collect as many 'Make Your Mark' ballots as I possible could. I started this by going to all my local schools and explaining what the vote was about and telling them what to do to get a large amount of votes. On the 5th of October all the representatives from the Wakefield area met up and counted how many ballots we had achieved this year, and after lots of hard with and many bottles of Lucozade we had counted all of our ballots and had exceeded our target of 6,000 ballots, with me collecting over 1000 of that total.

Maia Parkin, 13, Youth Councillor We have been doing a lot of work in our weekly meetings.

1. Make your make- I have got all my ballots out in Kettlethorpe. I have got some of them back.

2. Respect- last meeting I had a talk about respect because we sometimes don’t get along so I had 5 mins to talk about it.

3. Wakefield Convention- We have been discussing the place and workshops for youth parliament.

York Dominic Fairbrass, 15, Member of Youth Parliament October has been a fantastic month for York, MYM was an incredible success this year, increasing 1200% from last year's total of 250 to just over 3000 this year! York Youth Council also met with John Stonehouse, director of children's services in York to discuss campaigns and

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issues in the city effecting young people. Over the next few weeks we will be choosing our campaigns for this academic year.

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Northern Ireland Fermanagh & South Tyrone Hollie Morrison, 16, Member of Youth Parliament What a busy month! The 10th of October marked the end of Make Your Mark - which wasn't an easy task! I found that some schools did not want to co-operate and were quite harsh with their refusal (that could be because the headmaster of a certain school doesn't like me, but oh well) I managed to get a 100% turnout from my own school and had 6 schools taking part. By the end, I had managed to get 3662 ballots from my region, which was impressive considering my original target was 1900. Convention 2 in Belfast was great craic.

A lot of us piled in our UKYP t-shirts and the ballot counting began, which was a lot of hard work! In the end, Northern Ireland managed to get 37,109 ballots completed, which meant that 1 in 4 young people took part in MYM. HUGE achievement! Hollie out ;)

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Scotland East Renfrewshire Nicole Dempster, 18, Member of Youth Parliament This month I went down to Newcastle to join some of the other Scottish MYPs along with the MYPs from the North East at the BYC Convention. It was a fantastic day, and was so encouraging to meet lots of new people, who have a similar passion to represent young people.

Glasgow City Member of Youth Parliament I have even talking to young people in Glasgow about the UKYP and the impact Make Your Mark will have on them. I have also been in conversation with MSYPs, MSPs, MPs and Councillors about how they can best support the chosen campaigns, particularly the Votes at 16 campaign if it is chosen.

Highland Member of Youth Parliament I sent in my Make Your Mark ballots and my constituents voted mostly for legalising euthanasia.

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Wales Powys Jack Gillum, 18, Member of Youth Parliament Powys Youth Forum recently held its September Residential. At this residential the group had a number of new members join the group, so this residential was a training residential. The different topics which we discussed included the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Welsh Government & National Assembly for Wales, the Children Commissioner for Wales, Participation Standards and what Powys County Council is. Another major topic which was discussed was the way that we are going to work on our issues of School Councils, Mental Health, Improving Welsh Language and improving links with County Councillors.

Members also took part in the current Children Commissioner for Wales review www.ccfwreview.co.uk. The final session which we had at this residential was on Make Your Mark and the way that Powys can improve their turnout from the previous year and get 5000 votes cast!!

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Support worker’s Stories

East Midlands Leicestershire Rina Roy, Support worker BRIDGING THE YEARS – Intergenerational Event - Sept 27th 2014 On September 27th 2014, the Older People’s Engagement Network (OPEN) and County Youth Council for Leicestershire (CYCLe) hosted an intergenerational event called “Bridging the Years”.

The purpose of the event, as well as celebrating the older people’s month, was to bring young and old together in shared learning experiences and activities.

The event marked the start of what is hoped will be a long a fruitful relationship between the generations to remove barriers, develop meaningful connections and create relevant community programmes.

There were a variety of activities available to all, including:• Youth work activities around healthy lifestyles (beer goggles, cancer awareness, healthy eating, substance use) • The Beacon Voices Choir and singing workshop • Filming workshop • Painting – watercolours, drawing and canvas activities • Table tennis competition • Street Dancing • IT/technical help with phones, ipods etc • Bowls, Refreshments and lunch were provided courtesy of Leicestershire Police who support OPEN. The plan of the day included the potential to display or perform the results of the various workshops. This meant a performance of “California Dreaming” and “It’s A Wonderful World” by Beacon Voice Choir (Leicestershire’s Children in Care Choir) plus guests from OPEN, a display of watercolour and pastel artwork, and a performance of the street dance!

People were also able to get into smaller locality groups and begin planning some future activities including, sports, cooking, clay modelling, painting a mural, more choir work, art, painting and sketching, dancing, discussion groups, mobility scooter races, circus skills, karaoke, bake offs and quizzes, to name just a few.

Lucy Smith, chair of OPEN said: 56

“Although this was a celebration of the older people's month, the Bridging the Years event is about the young and the older generations in Leicestershire, sharing hopes and aspirations, working and learning together, reaching out to each other and having fun together”.

97 people attended the event, spanning the whole age range, and feedback about the event was really positive, including the following comments:“Well organised event, activities were fun and informative and helped towards inter-generational communication & engagement” “Very good as meeting other members within the community, this gives the opportunity to share and get together, especially with the younger groups, well done” “We should do more things like this in the future” REPORT BY RINA ROY, Leicestershire MYP Bridging the years is about filling in the generation gap between young and elderly people. The Leicestershire County Youth Council decided to hold an event which brings both generations together spending time doing workshops and activities. I think this is a great event getting to know our local elderly people and understanding each other and getting to spend time together.

I think it's really important in this generation that this happens more often so we can learn about the past and how generations have changed. I really enjoyed the Art workshops and created some wonderful art work with the elderly people. The main highlight for me from this event was getting to know elderly people, their stories and what they've done in the past and how generations have changed because of what they've been through. I think we should do more events like this that brings generations together and helps us to build a better understanding between both old and young.

Lincolnshire Andrew Garbett, Support worker Lincolnshire Youth Cabinet invites schools to their local meetings as they move around the county. The Priory Ruskin Academy sent 3 students to the PGL meeting near Grantham. Priory Ruskin also signed up directly to Make Your Mark this year - thank you. We also had a student, Kitty, from Skegness Grammar School who has since encouraged the school to join in with the national MYM ballot - thank you.

After their next meeting County Councillor Richard Davies, Executive Member for Highways and Transport, has agreed to join Cabinet for an informal discussion on transport and young people over lunch. Takeover Day will also be being looked at with better links to senior officers and councillors the order of the day. This was identified in the Annual Sitting Report that Lincolnshire MYPs did after their conference - shared with key councillors and the DCS. 57

East of England Hertfordshire Jasmin, Youth Support Worker October has been one super busy month! First, we attended the second BYC convention in Pimlico with our MYPs and members of Herts1125, who really enjoyed the day. Second saw the launch of the Herts1125 Young People’s Manifesto– the highlight of our year! MYPs presented their findings to the young people and Councillors who attended the event at County Hall in Hertford. This year over 4,100 young people took part in the the consultations that were sent out in May, a massive increase on last year and, as always, are aiming to keep this number increasing.

Young people who attended the conference then put forward and debated possible issues for next year’s Manifesto. Members of Herts1125 chaired the debates fantastically and there were lots of lively discussions taking place. Issues debated included promoting health relationships, helping young people with bullying and support for the young LGBT+ community. The issues that were voted for at Herts1125 will be voted on by as many young people as possible within the County, along with voting for next year’s MYPs in January. The final big event for us was this year’s Hustings event for 2015’s potential MYPs. This year we only ran one all-day event at a central point in Herts that young people could drop into when they liked. Once we had worked out how to use the Go-Pros young people had a great time filming their election videos in a much less formal format than previous years. We are still waiting for a few last minute entries before the editing of videos can start ready for full on campaigning in December!

Peterborough Jenny Weeden, Support worker WOW what a busy month it's been!! At the end of September we celebrated the achievements of our Looked After Children with a fun day and awards ceremony. The highlight for me was having one of the young people take to the stage to sing at the awards - something she wouldn't have had the confidence to do 3 months ago!

Hot on the heels of this was our final push for Make Your Mark ballots. We are awaiting the final confirmation of the votes but are very pleased to see that we have received approximately 36% turnout!! This is higher than the turnout in this year’s local election in Peterborough and 10% higher than we achieved last year! (and people say young people aren't engaged?!)

It was great to join other young people from across the regions at the BYC convention on the 11th October, and to hear how well everyone had done with Make Your Mark around the country was amazing.

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This month we have also teamed up with our Governance team to put on a mock cabinet meeting with students from schools across the city celebrating Local Democracy Week. Our Youth MP Emily Fisher Welcomed students to the event that enabled students to put their ideas forward to councillors and the Chief Executive of the Council. There were some excellent proposals by students and definitely some potential future Youth MPs in attendance.

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Yorkshire and Humber Barnsley Clare Archer, Youth Council Coordinator Make Your Mark – At the National sitting we set a target for Barnsley of submitting 8, 500 ballots. I am proud to say we smashed this and actually managed to submit 11, 244 completed paper ballots! The young people from the Youth Council and the UKYP representatives worked really hard to achieve such a brilliant turn out, so a massive thank you and well done to them all.

Barnsley’s top three issues were 1 – Living wage of £7.65 per hour 2 – Work Experience 3 - Maths and English exam resits Dearne Valley Residential – The Youth Council and the Care 4 Us council took part in a three day team building / training residential at the beginning of October. Some of the activities were very challenging and pushed young people out of their comfort zones. However all the young people got stuck in and gained a lot out of the experience.

Convention 2 – We were very proud to host the second convention at Barnsley Town Hall on the 11th October. The Convention went really well with guest speeches from Barnsley MP Dan Jarvis and Mayor of Selby Rosie Corrigan (ex UKYP member). Lots of amazing speeches were delivered in the council chamber for debate lead and procedures group representative. To finish the day the exceptional Make Your Mark results were announced.

Director of Public Health Interview – Leah Harston from the Barnsley Youth Council and Ashlea Harvey Care 4 Us Council member took part in a discussion panel for Barnsley’s new Director of Public Health. This was a great opportunity to experience how interviews work and they both did a really good job.

Emma Baines, Involving Young People Coordinator Children in Care & Care Leavers Celebration event 2014 Barnsley’s Children in Care Council have been meeting to support the planning of this year’s celebration event for children in care and care leavers. Council members have helped to decide the theme for this year’s event, choose the menus and colour schemes and have also agreed on the entertainment for the evening.

In total 160 children and young people in care or care leavers have been nominated to receive an award in one of the following 4 categories.

Personal Achievement Award Education, Training, employment & apprenticeships Award 60

Sports & Performing arts Award Group Award The event will take place on Wednesday 26th November and it is certainly set to be a fun packed celebratory evening.

Yorkshire & Humberside Children in Care Council – Regional meeting (Doncaster) Two of Barnsley’s Children in Care Council (CIC) members represented the town at the regional CIC group in Doncaster on 20th September 2014.

Guests on the day also included professionals from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner.

Young people and support staff shared their views and ideas to help influence the work that the Children’s Commissioner undertakes and young people also gave their feedback on their experiences in relation to advocacy & Children’s Rights.

Representatives from the British Youth Council also attended the meeting to initiate discussions with the group about how the regional CIC could get involved in the regional BYC & UKYP conventions and campaigns. The main aim of which would be to enable a joined up approach with regards to the regions youth voice vehicles.

Members also discussed how the Yorkshire & Humberside CIC group could work more proactively in the future and looked at what campaigns may be an effective starting point for them to concentrate their efforts.

Doncaster John Betts: Support Work (LAC & CICC) 10 young people from Doncaster who are under local authority care embarked on a weekend residential to Castleton which was sponsored by the Doncaster Rotary club. The centre in Castleton is run by Sheffield Rotary club and offers young people an opportunity to experience the outdoor life and explore the sights around Castleton.

On Saturday morning the group embarked on a six mile hike up and over Hollings Cross towards the base of Mam Tor, which is one of the highest hills in the Peak District elevating up to 1,696 ft. (517 mts) to the summit where you can experience the wonderful views of the Peak District.

The young people really enjoyed the walk, for some it was a totally new experience and it became a real adventure. In the afternoon the group had the opportunity to visit Treak Cliff Cavern this is a show cave in Castleton. It is part of the Castleton Site of Special Scientific Interest and one of only two sites where the ornamental mineral Blue John is still excavated.

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After the visit the young people walked into the town to visit a traditional fudge making shop and was shown how fudge is made then it was off to the old traditional sweet shop yum yum.

Linda Hardy and Debbie Burton, Support workers We have been very busy here collecting ballot boxes and counting MYM votes. Ballot boxes were out in all areas across the borough and workers were making sure that as many young people as possible took part and voted. Workers in some areas even got a bit competitive which is good because this year we smashed our target. At the Annual sitting the MYP’s raised our target for Doncaster and agreed to achieve 6, 000 votes, we have all had our fingers crossed since then  we managed to get over 7, 400 votes!!!

We would like thank everybody who took part and helped us to achieve this massive target! We would also like to announce that the top issue that young people in Doncaster voted for is: Everyone should be paid at least the Living Wage of £7.65 per hour (£8.80 in London). Anyone who works, regardless of age, should have a decent standard of living.

Our MYP’s are really looking forward to going to the House of Commons and seeing everyone, they are excited about the opportunity and both are eager to debate the top five national issues.

They have also recently met with MP Rosie Winterton to discuss the top issue identified in Doncaster, they asked for her thoughts about what they could do for this issue and shared their ideas about their work plans.

Kirklees Raz Mohammed, Support worker Case Study 1 – “Becoming a Youth councillor” What the problem was A young person had issues self-esteem, confidence and other mental health issues due to her slight disabilities and her own person family situation. She had also been a victim of bullying throughout her school life and on her estate. Her family had low aspirations and elder brother expressed openly there was no need to work as you could get what you needed on benefits 62

How engagement helped overcome problems Through engaging with us she had the chance to engage in projects on sexual health and relationships, life skills, girl time, dealing with bullying, anger and choices, a 12 month young leaders project and she was referred onto the NCS project. These equipped her with an increased self-esteem and confidence, she learnt to deal with bullies assertively and positively and it helped her to build resilience toward these issues. Through experiencing new things, meeting new people and engaging in these projects she managed to learn how to deal with her disabilities in a positive way.

How they continue to overcome our problems She continues to overcome these problems by remaining resilient and she is now comfortable in herself, she knows her strengths and through engagement with us we have championed breaking down barriers, pushing boundaries to overcome fears and anxieties. This young lady came 2nd in a competition held by the Mirfield Round Table competition for young person of the year. She is now a Youth councillor for Kirklees Youth Council and aspires to work with young people with disabilities. These achievements, her long term goals and skills she has learnt through 5 years of intervention have helped her to reach a point where she is independent, outgoing, has aspirations and also volunteers for her local radio station and local charity.

Case Study 2 – “Realising Ambition - Achieving Aspirations” What the problem was A young person had severe self-esteem and confidence issues, some related to her weight.

During a consultation she revealed a dream was to go to America however, she didn’t have a plan on how she would do that, she had no job and was in the final year of school. She also had issues with not being confident enough to apply for jobs and needed help with her CV. How engagement helped overcome problems Consistency over a 3 year period meant this young person had consistent engagement and support in her life. Series of small projects: aimed to gain new skills, have new experiences become confident, raise self-esteem, increase knowledge.  Aspirations Project, Volunteering Opportunity: Supporting a residential with European participants called “the real me”. Taking a lead on a Poverty, Worklessness and Aspirations project with a group of young people in the community  Undertaking a leadership project which equipped her with training on subjects such as Healthy and Safety, First Aid, Food Hygiene, Event Planning, Safeguarding,  Youth Work Ethics and Boundaries which resulted in the planning, preparation, costing and evaluation of 8 events throughout a 10 month period including an intergenerational bingo and BBQ event, locality festive events and a summer camp • Support with her CV and Camp America Application  Discussions and reflective explorations of her long and short term goals and what steps she needed to put in place at each stage, critically decision making being led by her  This series of projects helped this young person overcome her own self-esteem and emotional health and wellbeing issues. The group work setting allowed her to reflect on 63

how her behaviour impacted others and how she could use her strengths to her advantage How they continue to overcome our problems She is now in America undertaking Camp America and having the skills, abilities and knowledge through the above interventions has helped her to remain focused through any issues occurred while in America.

She has remained resilient and adapted even when she arrived and found out everything wasn’t how she imagined. Before going to America the above projects and family support helped her to remain focused and helped create a “can do� attitude toward her own personal development, career progression and making the right life choices.

She also recognised and understood her personal health and lost weight and has maintained that for 18 months now. Ultimately she is living a healthier, happier lifestyle which help her to achieve her goals. She continues to engage with the Youth Work Team and acts as a role model for other young people in the community, sharing the message that you can make things happen for yourself. This is having a positive effect on the peer group. She had a job for 12 months at KFC where she saved up to go to America.

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Thank you for your submissions this month, we look forward to reading more positive stories next month.

Also we have The Youth on Board (YOB) Awards which is an exclusively youth-led rolling award scheme that recognises innovative and exciting youth participation, both from young people and the projects and organisations that support them.

Deadline for submissions is quarterly.

To apply see more on: http://www.byc.org.uk/training-services/youth-on-board-awards.aspx

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