Monday 23 October 2017

Another busy meeting

This evening the new Youth Mayor and Deputy met before the official Youth Cabinet meeting to sign their role description and review the @VOGYouthMayor Twitter account.  They also made plans to create a poster which you should see in schools and youth organisations across the Vale very soon, and watch out for the new Youth Mayor Instagram account!

During tonight's meeting we learnt about the Member of UK Youth Parliament's recent training session with Children in Wales in preparation for the UK Youth Parliament Annual Sitting in November.  We also had an official response from the Vale Youth Service who set out what they plan to do with the recommendations we made in the Youth Service Satisfaction Report.  We are looking forward to meeting with the Senior Managers in March 2018 to review the progress that has been made.  More discussions took place about out priority work areas for this term of office including the Welsh Baccalaureate and low pupil moral, and gender equality in the PE curriculum.  We are hoping to invite some expert guest speakers to future meetings to gain more information on these topics which will help us set some objectives.

  

Tuesday 17 October 2017

A new Youth Mayor 2017-18

At the Vale Youth Forum meeting last night, the Leader of the Council, Cllr John Thomas, and the Deputy Vale Mayor and Youth Champion, Cllr Leighton Rowlands, announced the results of the Youth Mayor election.

Niclas Want, aged 18 from Ysgol Gymraeg Bro Morgannwg was elected Youth Mayor 2017-18 and stated: “It has been fantastic to see the high turnout, and young people getting engaged with the vote.  I am excited to be working with the Council and young people across the Vale in the next year.”

Daley Chapman, aged 16 from Barry Comprehensive, was elected Deputy Youth Mayor 2017-18 and said: “I am happy to be re-elected and the number of votes cast this year.  I am looking forward to visiting young people across the Vale and listening to their views.” 

Elections had been held during Local Democracy Week (9th-13th October) across the Vale of Glamorgan in schools, youth clubs and youth organisations.  Young people aged 11-25 had the opportunity to vote.  This is the fourth year the Vale Youth Service have run the election campaign, and 4766 young people voted.  What a great turn out!

The new Youth Mayor and Deputy will work with the Youth Cabinet and young people across the Vale for the next year.   



Monday 16 October 2017

Make Your Mark 2017

The results from the Make Your Mark ballot 2017 are in ...

A total of 4577 young people across the Vale of Glamorgan voted in this year's campaign either within their schools, youth clubs or youth organisations.  First of all a big thank you to those who voted, but also members of the Vale Youth Forum and Youth Action Groups in Penarth, Barry and Llantwit, who encouraged young people to get involved and vote for their top issue.

As Members of the UK Youth Parliament (MYP) we will do our best to ensure decision-makers take the results on board.  We are currently writing a report on the campaign and the results and we will then decide how we will be working on the most important topics voted for by young people across the Vale.

So what was the most important issue to young people in the Vale of Glamorgan? 

Topic
Number of Votes
A curriculum to prepare us for life
850
Votes at 16
459
Protect LGBT+ People
560
Support for Young Carers
145
Transport
746
First aid Education for all young people
396
Mental Health
479
Make the invisible visible
226
Protect schools budgets from damaging cuts
159
Work experience hubs  for 11-18 year olds
557
Total
4577


The UK wide results are yet to be announced, but they will be debated at the UK Youth Parliament Annual Sitting at Westminster in November, where a national priority will be voted on.

We will also be working on some of the issues on a more local level through the Vale Youth Forum.  We are currently discussing this at our meeting tonight and it looks like we are likely to focus on transport.

We promise to keep you updated.

Thanks,
Ushenka (MYP) & Ben (DMYP)


Monday 9 October 2017

Meet & Greet

Tonight's meeting started with an informal meet & greet with the Vale of Glamorgan Cabinet.  This is the first time we met them as a group since the election.  We were paired up with a Cabinet Member and got to know one another and learnt more about each others roles.  We then delivered a presentation about the purpose of the youth cabinet and we got to share our ideas on what we would do if we were the Leader of the Council for a day.  We all felt like the Cabinet members were interested in the work we do and we look forward to working with them in the future. 

Following our meet & greet, we held our normal monthly meeting.  The topics discussed were Local Democracy Week, where we had the opportunity to vote for the next Youth Mayor and we found out where elections are being held all week. We looked at the Make Your Mark results for the Vale which will be published soon and discussed how some issues might link to our work.  We also had an extensive discussion about the Welsh Baccalaureate where we expressed the strong contempt amongst young people surrounding the subject.  This is to become a topic for us to work on as it ties in with many other issues facing young people today.



Thursday 5 October 2017

Who will be the next Youth Mayor?

It's nearly that time of year again, where young people in the Vale have the opportunity to vote for their Youth Mayor.  Local Democracy Week (LDW) takes place between 9th and 13th October 2017 and the Youth Mayor elections is one way we can make young people aware of their local council and encourage them to have their say about their local communities.

This year, three members of the Youth Cabinet are standing for election and want to become the Youth Mayor for 2017-18.  Niclas Want, Ushenka Rajapakse and Daley Chapman need your votes if they are to be successful.

At the Vale Youth Forum (VYF) meeting on Monday 2nd October, the three candidates took part in a hustings.  A hustings, is similar to a question time event, and VYF members had the opportunity to find out more about the candidates manifestos and ask them challenging questions.

Your candidates said:

"The hustings were a good opportunity for us to voice our plans, and to make us think hard about what we want to work on.  We covered many topics and we all debated convincingly.  I hope this opens doors to look at larger hustings for future elections."

"Although I opposed the hustings to begin with, it was a good opportunity to put an actual manifesto out there, and to see what VYF members thought of our ideas.  Answering questions from members was fantastic because it makes you think about your own ideas. We should definitely do it again on a bigger scale!"