Universal Children’s Day

World Children’s Day started way back in 1954 as “Universal Children’s Day” and is celebrated on 20 November each year to promote international togetherness, awareness among children worldwide, and improving children’s welfare.

Since 1990, World Children’s Day also marks the anniversary of the date that the UN General Assembly adopted both the Declaration and the Convention on children’s rights. We use this day to celebrate the development of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and improving the lives of young people right across the world.

Cardiff Youth Council want to make you more aware of the impact and significance of these days and how the UNCRC has improved the lives of children and young people across the world.

The World is not perfect…but the welfare for young people right across the world has improved. The amount of young people feeling safe has improved. The amount of provision and access to youth services has improved. Most importantly “Children and young people have a voice and a choice in decisions that affect them” – (Article 12 UNCRC).

There is still more that can be done. There are always ways to improve and reach more young people improving their lives and providing more opportunities. Today we celebrate all our achievements and the developments towards a brighter future for all children and young people and we ask you to take one small step in reaching that goal. Lets all raise awareness of Universal Children’s Day.

Kyle: Cardiff Youth Council Member

Spread the word with a tweet and help us share the message for Universal Children’s Day!

#UCDCardiff

The Votes are in… CYC Elections

 

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AND THE VOTES ARE IN…..
CYC have been busy electing 4 members to significant posts in the organisation. Firstly we thanked the 4 CYC members who were stepping down. CYC had a great year and a lot of this was down to the leadership and commitment from those folks who were successful in last years election.

 

Our new Chair is Stephanie Ezeadum (17), she was MYP last year and is studying for her A levels at Cathedral School.

C Y C  ELECTIONS
Our new Vice Chair is Ed Jones (16) a student at Cardiff High and a member of CYC for 2 years. Ed said ‘I am passionate about young people having their voice

heard and look forward to representing the views of young people over the next year!’ Our 2 new elected Members of Youth Parliament for Cardiff are David Abadir (17) and Tabitha Balogun (17). David told CYC members ‘Thank you for voting for me and I will ensure I will work hard to represent Cardiff not only in the House of Commons but throughout the year here in the constituency’

 

A Curriculum 4 Life Update

c4life site

The Curriculum for life working group has been meeting monthly to create a campaign to raise awareness of the importance of PSE lessons and how they need improving.

The group have been working with a website developer Youth Friendly to develop the existing Tools4Life website, making it more accessible and adding more information to the website.

The group are now creating a campaign alongside the website so young people can show their support in asking for PSE lessons to be improved. The group are hoping to have the website launched soon! Here’s a sneaky preview of the new updated website.

Making Rights A Reality — Our Grand Council

100 children and young people from across 26 schools came together to discuss the important issues of children’s rights at this months Grand Council event at Cardiff City Hall.

The high profile event was sponsored by Cardiff Council Cabinet Member for Democracy and Citizen Engagement Dan De’Ath who opened the event stating ‘We need you to tell us what a Child Friendly City looks like because you are the experts! All the work and ideas developed throughout today’s event will shape our thinking and inform the way forward for Cardiff’.

Delegates had a busy day-long programme including taking part in workshops on democracy and children’s rights then breaking into teams to develop their vision of a Child Friendly City.

Each team looked into 3 elements communication, governance and democracy. After a short lunch break teams then returned to the council chamber to present their vision with one team even righting a song!

One young delegate from Greenhill School said that ‘he enjoyed the day so much, he was buzzing

Cardiff Council will now take the findings from the Grand Council and use it to develop their city wide vision to embed children’s rights across the city.

An application to form a partnership with global charity Unicef will take place by the end of the year hopefully leading to a range of programmes for 2017 onwards.

 

Cardiff Youth Service launches pledge developed by CYC

Cardiff Youth Council developed a series of workshops to be run with children and young people across the city. These workshops highlighted the importance of children’s rights and enabled participants to choose rights that were really important to them.

Youth Council members then developed these rights into a series of statements, these were then sent to Cardiff Youth Service Management requesting them to consider how the newly restructured youth service could embed these rights into their work.

As a direct result Cardiff Youth Service has now developed a ‘Pledge’ to young people. They launched the CYS Pledge in the autumn term and now staff plan against the pledge and it forms part of the staff development process!

Well done Cardiff Youth Service!

RACE AND RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION

Cardiff Youth Council Members Yasmin Bashary and Stephanie Ezeadum (MYP) represented the CYC Race and Religious Discrimination Group at the annual MEND Annual Dinner and Islamophobia Exhibition last month.

MEND is a not-for-profit company that was founded to help empower and encourage British Muslims within local communities to be more actively involved in British media and politics.

Race and religious discrimination came second in this year’s CYC ballot and a working group has been formed to try to address the issue.

Guest speaker Yvonne Ridley explained that ‘we must not give oxygen to Far Right Groups and instead stand together and be united to expose the hate’.

race-dinner

Second Grand Council event 23/03

Hey guys!

As some of you will know, as part of its plan to engage more with young people and CYC, Cardiff Council are working with us to produce three Grand Council events at the City Hall this year; the first of which that was held in December, on the theme of “What Matters to Future Generations”  was a great success.

We’re really looking forward to meeting young people from schools colleges and youth organisations all over Cardiff this March for our second installment, in order to discuss how Cardiff can achieve UNICEF “Child Friendly City” status. This status would recognise Cardiff as a city committed to fulfilling children’s rights.

You can find out more about this initiative here.

We’ll be looking at the criteria needed to meet this, and will have the opportunity to offer solutions from the perspective of young people to the challenges Cardiff faces in becoming “Child Friendly”.

Here are the basic points that have to be met:

Young people… 

  • know and understand their rights know about the services available and how to access them
  • have a say in the design, delivery and evaluation of services
  • experience connected, tailored and responsive services, even if their needs are complex
  • feel safe, nurtured, prioritised and are treated with dignity.

 

For those of you who have received confirmation of their place at the event, I’ll look forward to seeing you there! Remember that the event is being held at Cardiff City Hall, Cathays Park, 9:30-2:00, and light refreshments and a packed lunch will be provided. 

 And for those of you who are not attending the event- is there anything you’d like to comment on with regards to Cardiff becoming a “Child-Friendly City?” If you have any remarks, questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions regarding any of the above points, or anything else, don’t hesitate to get in touch! 

You can comment on this post, tweet us @cardiffyc, get in touch via our Facebook page, or send an email to me at maegandaviesjohn@outlook.com.

Thanks for reading guys, and remember to like and share!

Mae and CYC 🙂

Don’t Hate, Educate

Hi everyone,

Just a quick post to tell everyone that there’s a new campaign page up and running for CYC – #DontHateEducate

This page has been set up by Cardiff Youth Council members to support our priority of tackling racial and religious discrimination in Cardiff, if you’d like more information on how the UK Youth Parliament as a whole are taking on this priority, then click here.

This is a really important issue, so please show your support by liking and sharing our new page:  https://www.facebook.com/donthateeducatecyc/

Look out for upcoming events, and please make sure to attend and show your support!

Thank you for reading,

Stay awesome.

Xinyu, and CYC 🙂

Happy New Year!

Hey everyone,

Firstly, sorry for activity being a bit slow over Christmas, but now we’re back!

Just to remind everyone of the meeting we have coming up tomorrow, and to show you the agenda that’s been prepared for tomorrow, here it is;

photo (2).jpgWe have some really exciting news to share with you all about the Mental Health priority, and we’ll be doing some important work on all of our priorities this week, so it’d be great to see you all there!

As always, a warm welcome to any new members, and if you have any questions at all feel free to get in touch 🙂

Look out for some exciting updates really soon!!

Thanks again,

Mae and CYC 🙂