Friday 20 January 2017

UKYP Day of Action

Today is the UK Youth Parliament Day of Action ...

Members of Youth Parliament (MYP's) for the Vale of Glamorgan and Cardiff and the chair of the Vale Youth Forum went to Cardiff Bay to have a meeting with Stephen Doughty MP to discuss the national priority - Votes at 16! Over 112,000 young people who took part in the recent Make Your Mark consultation voted to give 16 and 17 year olds a vote and it was voted as the national priority by over 300 MYPs at the annual sitting in November.

Our first job as MYPs is to get as much support for the campaign as possible including local politicians and decision-makers.

After discussing the topic is was very clear that Stephen Doughty, MP for Cardiff South & Penarth supports Votes at 16 and has been a champion for many years now.  So we didn't have much of a job to do in trying to get him to support our campaign! He was very happy to listen and see what we had to say on the topic.

We updated him on what the Vale Youth Forum and Cardiff Youth Council had been up to lately and the main priorities for young people locally.  All of his responses to our questions were really interesting and it caught our attention that he used to be a member of a Youth Parliament himself and also attended a comprehensive school in the Vale.

As MYPs we are now looking towards working on the next step, which will further promote the importance of votes@16 for young people and raise awareness of the current UKYP campaign.


Tuesday 17 January 2017

Happy New Year!

Today we had our first youth cabinet meeting of 2017.  We took part in the consultation - 'Should the NAfW change its name?' which you can also take part in here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/AssemblyName.  We discussed the different options the Senedd could change its name to such as the Welsh Parliament or Parliament for Wales but we wondered how long this would take and how much money it would cost?

Daley, Dan and Bronwen received Millennium Volunteer certificates for completing 200 and 100 hours of volunteering as Youth Councillors in the Vale (whoop!) and we also discussed the proposal of the new South Wales Metro.  We will try to find out some more information about this and ensure young people have a say on the proposals because we know transport for young people in the Vale was voted one of the top issues in the recent Mark Your Mark ballot.

We want to take this opportunity to thank you for reading our blog as your support is what makes us do what we do.  In 2017 we will work hard to represent the views of young people and improve things for them.  We are grateful for your support.  Happy New Year!