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.

 

United Nations Universal Day Of The Child Celebration

The globally recognised day for children’s rights was marked by CYC with an event at County Hall on Monday 21st of November.

A range of key decision makers and partners joined CYC members including Council Directors, Senior Politicians, representatives from Welsh Government Ministerial Office, 3rd sector partners and the Children’s Commissioners Office.

As well as championing children’s rights participants were served afternoon tea and played a range of rights based games.

The busy programme included showcasing the positive impact of the work developed by CYC in 2015/16, learning about Rights Respecting Schools, announcing youth priorities for Cardiff 2016, and recognising schools roll in this year’s Make Your Mark Programme.

CYC Chairperson Xinyu Ye (17) said ‘We think it is important to bring together key decision makers to raise awareness of the importance of children’s rights and highlight examples of work which comes as a result of children being able to have their rights met’