We welcomed and hosted our friends from the North West Ministry of Youth (NWMY), Derry & Strabane, Northern Ireland. The NWMY are supporting the council in Derry & Strabane on their drive to become a UNICEF child friendly authority, just as we have through our Children and Young People’s Advisory Board (CYPAB).
The young people from NWMY attended an event being run by the Cardiff Child Friendly Team at Techniquest, which was celebrating school across Cardiff who are part of the UNICEF Right’s Respecting Schools Award (RRSA). The NWMY were able to see what some of the schools having been doing as part of their journey on the RRSA and get a flavour of what is involved.
Later the MWMY met with us at chambers in City Hall where they were shown around the building to see where we meet for our General Meetings, they were then able to discuss a number of processes and mechanisms which we follow and ask further questions and how Cardiff Council engage with us.
As a team building exercise we took NWMY to Escape Rooms where we had a great time getting to know each other and try and escape from the rooms.
The following night we all went to play crazy golf in St David’s 2, where we got to build relationships further before all going out for pizza. It was only a fleeting visit from our friends but we are hopeful that this is just the start of ongoing of educational and cultural exchanges.