Stronger Fairer Greener – a renewed ambition

Stronger, Fairer, Greener Leaders Event Parkgate Hotel Westgate Street Cardiff 19th July 2022.

The new vision for Cardiff, Stronger Fairer Greener was publicly launched by the Leader of Cardiff Council, Cllr Huw Thomas, on the 19th July in the Parkgate Hotel, on Westgate Street.

Our very own Chair – Mia John and Vice Chair – Saffron Vanderkolk-Pellow hosted the event.

Stronger Fairer Greener replaces Capital Ambition, it sets out the priorities of the Leader and the members of his Cabinet to deliver:

A Stronger Cardiff: Attracting new investment and businesses into the city, boosting economic productivity, creating good-quality jobs in Cardiff’s high-value and foundational sectors, and boosting our resilience to climate change and associated environmental threats.

A Fairer Cardiff: Delivering excellent education, training, into work and social services, as well as transport connectivity, to ensure that all citizens are able to benefit from Cardiff’s growth and the new opportunities it creates.

A Greener Cardiff: Delivering a robust network of active travel and public transport, making Cardiff a ’15-minute city’, generating renewable energy and enhancing local biodiversity, ensuring that growth is sustainable and aligned with our commitment to becoming a Carbon Neutral City by 2030.

Lansiwyd y weledigaeth newydd ar gyfer Caerdydd, Cryfach, Tecach, Gwyrddach yn gyhoeddus gan Arweinydd Cyngor Caerdydd, y Cynghorydd Huw Thomas, ar 19 Gorffennaf yng Ngwesty’r Parkgate, ar Heol y Porth.

Ein Cadeirydd ni ein hunain – Mia John a’r Is-Gadeirydd – Saffron Vanderkolk-Pellow oedd yn cynnal y digwyddiad.

Cryfach Tecach Gwyrddach yn disodli Uchelgais Prifddinas, mae’n nodi blaenoriaethau’r Arweinydd ac aelodau ei Gabinet i gyflawni:

Caerdydd Gryfach: Denu buddsoddiad a busnesau newydd i’r ddinas, hybu cynhyrchiant economaidd, creu swyddi o ansawdd da yn sectorau sylfaenol a gwerth uchel Caerdydd, a rhoi hwb i’n gallu i wrthsefyll newid yn yr hinsawdd a’r bygythiadau amgylcheddol cysylltiedig.

Caerdydd Tecach: Darparu addysg, hyfforddiant, gwaith a gwasanaethau cymdeithasol rhagorol, yn ogystal â chysylltedd trafnidiaeth, i sicrhau bod pob dinesydd yn gallu elwa ar dwf Caerdydd a’r cyfleoedd newydd y mae’n eu creu.

Caerdydd Wyrddach: Darparu rhwydwaith cadarn o deithio llesol a thrafnidiaeth gyhoeddus, gan wneud Caerdydd yn ‘ddinas 15 munud’, cynhyrchu ynni adnewyddadwy a gwella bioamrywiaeth leol, gan sicrhau bod twf yn gynaliadwy ac yn gyson â’n hymrwymiad i ddod yn Ddinas Carbon Niwtral drwy 2030.

2022 CYC Chair & Vice Chair Elections

On Wednesday, July 13th 2022 Cardiff Youth Council (CYC) elections for Chair and Vice-Chair took place with 3 candidates putting themselves forward for election. All candidates delivered speeches to say why they wanted to, and should be, elected as Chair or Vice-Chair. They also took questions from members.

This year the following people stood for the positions of Chair & Vice-Chair of CYC:

  • Mikaeel Moulani
  • Zack Hellard
  • Arthur Templeman-Lilley

CYC and the the Child Friendly Cardiff (CFC) team thanks all candidates for putting themselves forward in such a courageous way, for delivering some inspiring speeches and answering all questions that CYC put forward.

Mikaeel and Zack were duly elected as Chair and Vice-Chair of CYC in the closest run election that we have seen, and has also given us our youngest ever Chair (Mikaeel, 11 years old), so a huge congratulations to all.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank Mia John and Saffron Vanderkolk-Pellow for their time as Chair and Vice-Chair. We wish them the very best in their future endeavours, please don’t be strangers and keep in touch.

Books that Deal with Important Social Issues

Social Summer

Racial Discrimination

  1. Queering Urban Justice: Queer of Colour Formations in Toronto- Jinthana Haritaworn
  2. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration- Isabel Wilkerson
  3. Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City- Tanya Talaga
  4. The New Jim Crows: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colour-blindness- Michelle Alexander
  5. Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present- Robyn Maynard
  6. Natives- Akala
  7. So You Wany to Talk About Race- Ijeoma Oluo
  8. Making of the Black Working Class in Britain- Ron Ramdin
  9. How to Be an Antiracist- Ibram X. Kendi
  10. Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor
  11. Between the World and Me- Ta-Nehisi Coates
  12. The Hate U Give- Angie Thomas
  13. White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism- Robin DiAngelo
  14. Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You- Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
  15. My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women- Lyse Doucet

LGBTQ+ Discrimination

  1. Queering Urban Justuce: Queer of Colour Formations in Toronto- Jinthana Haritaworn
  2. Good As You- Pail Flynn
  3. We Are Everywhere: Protests, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation- Matthew Riemer and Leighton Brown
  4. How we Fight for Our Lives- Saeed Jones
  5. We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir- Samra Habib
  6. Queer Intention- A (Personal) Journey Through LGBTG+ Culture- Amelia Abraham
  7. Trans Britain: Our Journey From The Shadows- Christine Burns
  8. The Stonewall Reader- The New York Public Library, Jason Baumann and Edmund White
  9. The Argonauts- Maggie Nelson
  10. Tomorrow Will Be Different- Sarah McBride
  11. A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns- Archie Bongiovanni and Tristan Jimerson
  12. The Book of Pride- Mason Funk
  13. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches- Audre Lorde

 Gender Discrimination

  1. Invisible Women: Exposing the Gender Bias Women Face Every Day- Caroline Criado-Perez
  2. Men Who Hate Women- Laura Bates
  3. Women, Race and Class- Angela Davis
  4. The Authority Gap- Mary Ann Sieghart
  5. Men Explain Things to Me- Rebecca Solnit
  6. The Cost of Sexism- Linda Scott
  7. Enough: The Violence Against Women and How to End It- Harriet Johnson
  8. Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women White Feminists Forgot- Mikki Kendall
  9. Everyday Sexism- Laura Bates
  10. The Guilty Feminist- Deborah Frances-White
  11. The Vindication of the Rights of Woman- Mary Wollstonecraft
  12. A Room of One’s Own- Virginia Woolf
  13. Feminism is for Everybody- Bell Hooks
  14. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches- Audre Lorde
  15. This Bridge Called My Back, Fourth Edition- Cherríe Moraga
  16. We Should All Be Feminists- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  17. Bad Feminist- Roxane Gay
  18. Girl Up- Laura Bates
  19. Women and Power- Professor Mary Beard
  20. Motherhood: Feminism’s Unfinished Business- Eliane Glaser

The Environment and Climate Change

  1. How to Give Up Plastic- Will McCallum
  2. Storming the Wall-Todd Miller
  3. Small is Beautiful- Ernst T Schumacher
  4. All We Can Save- Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katherine K Wilkinson
  5. The Unhabitable Earth: Life After Warming- David Wallace-Wells
  6. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants- Robin Wall Kimmerer
  7. Net Zero: How We Can Stop Climate Change- Dieter Helm
  8. The Future We Choose- Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac
  9. Living Planet- Sir David Attenborough
  10. No One is Too Small to Make a Difference- Greta Thunberg
  11. The Sixth Extinction- Elizabeth Kolbert
  12. There is No Planet B- Mike Berners-Lee
  13. The Sustainable(ish) Living Guide- Jen Gale
  14. What We Need to do Now: for a Zero Carbon Future- Chris Goodall

MYP Election

On Wednesday 6th April, 3 members of Cardiff Youth Council (CYC) stood for the position of Member of the UK Youth Parliament (MYP). All candidates delivered a speech on why they should be elected. They also took questions from other youth council members on what their priorities would be (for their campaign), ways that they will take others views into consideration and how they will engage with seldom heard groups (including those who are not CYC members).

This year the following people stood for the position:

  • Zack Hellard
  • Shifa Shahzad
  • Qahira Shah

CYC and the Child Friendly Cardiff (CFC) congratulate all the candidates for putting themselves forward in such an inspiring and brave way, delivering some great speeches and for answering all questions that CYC members had for them.

Zack Hellard & Shifa Shahzad have been duly elected as the new Members of the UK Youth Parliament for Cardiff for the next 2 years.

Below are statements each new MYP –

Zack: After 4 years of listening and learning from the young people of Cardiff I have been given the fantastic opportunity and trust to represent them, their issues and their needs as one of Cardiff’s newest Members of the UK Youth Parliament. Now is the time for action; with honest and hard work, along with the cooperation and support of the young people of Cardiff, I intend to make a difference- to ensure that every voice across Cardiff is heard and taken into account. 

Shifa: I wanted to become an MYP so that I could make meaningful change, not only in my own community but across the nation. Having achieved the role, now I can see that I will be able to do just that, and much more. The number of opportunities and support that has already been given is mind-blowing, and I’m so glad to be a part of this new community. I’m excited to serve my constituency and look forward to seeing what comes next!

We would like to thank Victor Ciunca for their work over the last few years as an MYP.

CYC General Meeting and Elections

This evening CYC had their General Meeting on Churchill Way’s new, but temporary, grassy knoll installed as part of the Child Friendly City’s Summer of Smiles.

5 candidates put themselves forward to stand as the new Chair and Vice Chair of CYC and each answered questions put to them by other CYC members. The candidates were:

Saffron Pellow

Martha Templeman-Lilley

Mia John

Eshaan Rajesh

Logan Colis

Congratulations to all of them, voting is now open and the results will be announced on Monday 19th July – Good luck all!!!!

One Planet Cardiff

One Planet Cardiff is the Council’s plan to become a green and sustainable city over the next ten years and to become carbon neutral by 2030, in answer to the climate emergency. More can be read here – Cardiff residents called on to join the ‘One Planet’ challenge (cardiffnewsroom.co.uk)

Cardiff Youth Council (CYC) has 2 members who sit on the One Planet Cardiff Steering board which is chaired by the leader of the council, Cllr Huw Thomas. A draft strategy has been created and can be seen here – OPC vision document 2020 ENGLISH.pdf (oneplanetcardiff.co.uk).

In order to support the members of CYC that sit on the One Planet Cardiff board and to ensure the young people have the opportunity to shape the strategy, a working group was formed by other members from CYC. This group undertook an exercise where they discussed what they believed are the important issues to young people and set out the topics and challenges into a table which was then cross referenced to the draft strategy (see above). They identified a number of things that were not in the draft strategy and the primary one, according to the group, was that there is nothing in the current draft strategy about education. The young people felt it was essential that procedures were put in place that ensured that children, young people, adults and businesses all received education around the topic of carbon reduction and climate change, especially what they can do to mitigate it.

In addition to looking at the strategy from a young person’s perspective and identifying what changes they believe need to be put in place to make Cardiff a carbon neutral city by 2030, the group also ran a consultation with other young people across Cardiff, in the form of a questionnaire on Microsoft Forms. The questionnaire was sent out to CYC members, youth groups, local schools, EOTAS provision and shared with the Council’s Education Department in order to garner a wide range of a responses. The group have created a report of the work they have undertaken and the report can be downloaded below.

EOTAS Lead Officer Interviews

Zahara, a CYC member, and two young people from Bryn Y Deryn recently sat on a young person’s panel for the role of EOTAS Lead Officer. The person successful in getting the role would oversee the delivery of the Educated Other Than At School (EOTAS) Programme, which includes ACT, Bryn Y Deryn and Cardiff and Vale College. There were two rounds of interviews for the post. The main interview panel agreed with the young person’s panel’s recommendations after the first round of interviews, but didn’t feel that they could appoint anyone and that it should be sent out again. After the second round of interviews, the young person and main interview panels held almost identical views on the candidates, with the young person’s recommendation for the role also being chosen by the main panel and subsequently offered the job.

Cyfweliadau Prif Swyddog EOTAS

Eisteddodd, Zahara, aelod o CIC, a dau berson ifanc o Fryn Y Deryn ar banel pobl ifanc am y rôl Prif Swyddog EOTAS. Cyfrifoldeb yr unigolyn fydd yn llwyddiannus yn y cyfweliadau bydd i oruwchwilio’r Prosiect Derbyn Addysg Heblaw yn yr Ysgol (EOTAS), sy’n cynnwys ACT, Bryn Y Deryn a Coleg Caerdydd a’r Fro. Bu cyfweliadau ddwywaith am y rôl. Cytunodd y prif banel gyda awgrymiadau’r panel pobl ifanc ar ôl y cyfweliadau cyntaf, ond nid oeddent yn teimlo bod unrhwyun yn deilwng, felly ail-hysbyswyd y swydd. Ar ôl yr ail rownd o gyfweliadau, roedd y ddau banel bron yn hollol gytun ynglun a’r ymgesiwyr, gyda dewis y panel pobl ifanc am y swydd yn llwyddiannus.