Why a Youth Council?
A steering group was created for a future Youth Council in 2005 as a result of young people expressing the need to be represented and to be involved in decision making when the outcome could affect them.
How we started
In 2007, 18 Youth Councillors were elected in through a text voting system. Around 500 votes were received. The group were given a budget and a full time support worker to help them get up and running.
What projects have we done?
We started off by doing a publicity project to ensure people knew who we were through developing a logo, buying in Youth Council t-shirts, merchandise to hand out at events and we attended community events and meetings.
We also created our Youth Council Money Pot so that young people in the community could benefit from half our budget directly. We created the application forms, funding criteria, process and publicity for this.
We created a 'Penny Pushers' DVD which is a peer educational tool with valuable hints and tips about money management. We also provided this DVD and money resources for free to our local schools.
We worked alongside Stagecoach to advertise their free proof of age card through better publicity.
We organised a charity fun run and cycle at Alice Holt to raise money for Comic Relief. Our event: 'On Your Marks, Get Red, Go, raised £368 for charity.
We held our first 'Make a Difference' Youth Conference in November which was attended by 5 local schools. The aim of the day was to encourage young people to run campaigns in their own schools and to understand that many political issues affect their age group, for example: cuts to youth services, the abolishment of the educational maintenance allowance and the rise in tuition fees.
The Youth Council have also been busy planning their 'Ignition-Ignite your talent,' charity talent show. Auditions took place over two evenings in December and the final itself is due to take place on Saturday 28th January, from 7-9.30pm, at the
If you have any questions about EHYC or would like information on how to join, contact Lara Nolan on: 01730 234186 or e-mail to lara.nolan@easthants.gov.uk
