Young people take part in Paris 2024 Olympic Exchange!

Nantes 2024 Exchange Programme 20-27th July 2024

Cardiff Youth Council and Cardiff Youth Service took part in a cultural exchange programme bringing together young people from twin cities in France, Germany and Wales during July this year.

The week-long exchange, which was funded through the Taith programme with support from International Links (Global) Ltd., was filled with fun activities, excursions into the City of Nantes, tours and visits to historical sites such as the museum of the machines. The group also attended a football match, between Spain and Japan, as part of the Paris Olympic Games 2024. Each evening a cultural exchange took place where countries could share music, pop culture and sport from their respective nations.

The project gave young people from Cardiff an opportunity to take part in intercultural celebrations with other young people from Nantes and other countries. The focus of this exchange was outdoor education activities, active citizenship and health and wellbeing. This is also part of wider milestones for the city this year in celebrating 60 years of twinning between Nantes and Cardiff.

Through the exchange young people have had the opportunities to broaden their horizons, experience new ways of life, bring back lessons to share with people at home, but also to bond as a group of young people from their own nation learning things about themselves and their own abilities. They have built strong friendships and as part of their responsibilities they were to document their trip which they are currently editing to share with other young people in Cardiff very soon!

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’