Social Justice – Cardiff Youth Council

Making Rights A Reality — Our Grand Council

December 14, 2016Cardiff Youth 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.

Parliament Take Over!

December 14, 2016Cardiff Youth Council

On Friday 11^th November, Elin Bold and Stephanie Ezeadum, Members of Youth Parliament for Cardiff debated a range of topical issues, including the need for a ‘curriculum for life’ and tackling racial and religious discrimination in the House of Commons. Elin gave a speech on her ideas for a ‘better, kinder democracy’.

276 Members of Youth Parliament from across the UK participated in the debate and have been elected by their peers to represent them with proceedings being chaired by the Speaker of the House of Commons, Rt Hon John Bercow MP.

This year’s UK Youth Parliament’s sitting will have marked the 7th year that MYP’s have debated on the green benches of the House of Commons. The sitting heralds the start of UK Parliament Week, an annual festival of events intended to connect communities across the UK with their democracy. This year’s Make Your Mark ballot to decide the topics of the Youth Parliament’s debate in the House of Commons, received a record number of ballots, reaching 978,216 young people. This cemented Make Your Mark as the biggest youth consultation of its kind in UK history, with almost two million young people aged 11-18 taking part in the last two years.

The debates where broadcast on BBC Parliament.

Members of Youth Parliament voted to campaign on votes at 16 and a curriculum for life (devolved England issue only) in 2017 with 112,687 young people across the UK voting to lower the voting age to 16 as their top priority in the recent Make Your Mark ballot.

Votes at 16 has been a campaign for the UK Youth Parliament for several years and there were passionate speeches made for the campaign in the House of Commons Chamber.