politics – Page 2 – Cardiff Youth Council

The Results Are In!

November 3, 2015November 5, 2015Cardiff Youth Council

As most of you know by now, CYC members, and young members of the British Youth Council all over the UK have been working hard to co-ordinate the biggest youth consultation in Britain… and the results are in! The UK results can be found here, but here is a detailed account of the findings in Cardiff.

Unfortunately, there was only a turnout of 38% among Cardiff’s school pupils… but altogether, we managed to collect the views of over 7,000 young people, which is great! Hopefully next year, you can help us make that number even bigger?

The top four were an interesting mix, with Living Wage coming out on top, followed by Curriculum 4 Life, Tackling Racism and Religious Discrimination, and at fourth, Mental Health. On the 18th of November, Cardiff Youth Council will be coming together for their monthly all members meeting, where a discussion will take place about what these results mean, and how we can go forward in tackling these really important issues for young Cardiffians all over the city. Come and be a part of the discussion!

Have a read through the rest of the results, and make sure you let us know what you think in the comments, or on Twitter, Facebook, or our new Instagram account. See you there, thanks again guys 🙂

Last day! sniffle

November 1, 2015November 2, 2015Cardiff Youth Council

So for the last final time, we wake up in this wonderful city. Day 5!

After much hard work throughout our stay, we were treated to a visit to the Mercedes museum.

12194139_905768222846177_626059857_o — A bit excited, are we?

I’ll let the fabulously stylish, timeline-style museum tell you its own story! Enjoy the cars 🙂

11667003_843879259064245_524835275_n — Even the building itself was awesome to look at

Museum Collage 2 — old models v. new ones- which do you prefer?

It’s important to remember the old guys which took us around for so long before we had the very first car.

The unlimited supply of cool displays and of course, the authentic logo.

Okay I may go back on my word, I really don’t think just those pictures alone do that magnificent museum justice. Even for someone who isn’t that into cars, I still found that this was a good walk through history. You started your tour from the top of this building and moved your way down through all that’s been. Starting the journey right back to the times of horse and carriage and then all the way to an inside views of the modern race car’s highly complex engine.

Not only a fine history lesson, but also a great life lesson. The struggles that the company faced after WWII were very real and they dealt with the issues incredibly well.

All good things must come to an end, all aboard for back to Cardiff!

To round up this wonderfully eye-opening trip, I think it’s fair to say everyone had given their 100% effort throughout the trip, evident in the many sleepy heads on our journey back.

And there are a few people we must thank for this trip – our lovely youth workers and Michael for organising this trip, for keeping us fed and entertained, for showing us life in a different light in the 5 short days we spent together.

12197393_905768146179518_1709061758_o — We wore you out! Thanks Lee’s!!

Thank you Lee, Lee and Dayle for being so patient, working with us and looking after each and every one of us so well, truly guys, thank you.

Perks of traveling at dusk, you always get the great sunset!

Now safe and sound, and back from London, there’s only one thing left to say…

…peace out guys.

3 Days down, 2 more to go!

October 30, 2015November 2, 2015Cardiff Youth Council

12170365_502598826566079_705543325_n — We’ve grown fond of our adoptive pet “Ze Pug” who will be missed

We’ve passed the halfway point and we are more than halfway through our Stuttgart venture!

Saturday, ’twas the dedicated day of business whilst all others in the city took a day off and rested we powered on, of course with lots of lovely members of Jugendrat Stuttgart!

12188874_843519459100225_1242555375_n — A few CYC members fangirling over this adorable model city

And so we say hello to this lovely building again! Not to bore you guys with details of the ‘top secret’ discussions that took place that day as there will be a blog with the report of our discussions coming soon – so watch this space! But the morning essentially consisted of various different members of our delegation giving varied styled presentations, whereupon these presentations were broken up by casual (but also highly productive) discussions, where we ventured into the comparisons of our two similar yet so different cities. We ended our ‘work session’ in true politics style and signed a really very symbolic flag which was signed last by the Cardiff delegation that visited Stuttgart many years ago.

12185977_905590779530588_1769798955_o — 10 POINTS TO WHOEVER CAN TELL ME WHAT THESE ARE CALLED AND WHERE I CAN FIND THEM AGAIN! DELICIOUS!

After a few needed hours of free time within the city centre, with the entire selection of fabulously lustrous money spending opportunities at our fingertips, we regrouped and went back to the youth hostel to get ready for our final night in Stuttgart!

Let no man say we didn’t get a full view of the city; throughout the past few days we visited so many different ‘youth houses’ and experienced true life for a young German in Stuttgart, and this center was yet another fine example of how well Stuttgart’s ‘youth houses’ are working out. We enjoyed music from some close to home bands and it was a great, relaxing wind-down to the end of another busy-bee schedule!

Must be said, it really was an AWESOME atmosphere!

But from here guys, we check out for one last time in Stuttgart! Our next post shall be the last leg of our highly educational, eye-opening trip and we’ll see you on the other side!

Xinyu and CYC ^.^

4 days down, 1 to go!

Curriculum For Life

October 4, 2015October 4, 2015Cardiff Youth Council

Hey everyone, happy Sunday!

Last year, one of the priorities which emerged from the Make Your Mark ballot and onto CYC’s agenda, was “Curriculum For Life”- this means that a large number of young people felt that the education they received at school wasn’t adequate in preparing them for the “real-world” challenges they would face after leaving. Not just that- the curriculum doesn’t prepare us for the challenges we face now, it fails to provide us with the skills and information we need to live happy, healthy lives; the emphasis on grades and exams is such that young people are increasingly unable to cope with the pressure.

We decided to conduct a survey on what young people thought of their PSE lessons, what content they think is missing, and how they think they could be improved.

The results were… interesting. Young people from different schools all over Cardiff took part, and the most notable thing about the results, were the inconsistencies that they showed us. There is no real structure, or any set curriculum for PSE, meaning there are huge differences in the quality of the teaching some people received- though quite a few people claimed they were happy with their PSE lessons, we question what this means when over half weren’t convinced… are some people just happy to have a free lesson which doesn’t mean anything, to do nothing in? Either way, it was unanimously agreed that there’s a lot missing from our lessons, from important topics like citizenship, first aid and mental health awareness to having a qualified specialist doing the teaching.

We turned the most important results into an infographic, which can be seen here; Infographic_v2 (4)

What do you think these results mean? Do you agree? What should be done about it? Let us know in the comments, or on Twitter, or Facebook!

Thank you to everyone who came to September’s meeting, and we’ll look forward to seeing you later this month!

Remember to share!

Mae and CYC 🙂

An intro to CYC

August 19, 2015August 19, 2015Cardiff Youth Council

Hello!

I guess a good way to start off this blog, which we’ll hope to update for you weekly, is with a quick introduction to Cardiff Youth Council, who we are and what we’re all about! I’m not sure if you’ve heard the tagline before- if you haven’t, here it is- we are the official network for young people advocating positive change, to make Cardiff a better place to live, work, and play. In a sentence, that’s what we are… which doesn’t tell you much, so I’m gonna elaborate slightly.

Basically, it’s a youth forum, where young people from the age of 11, up to the age of 25 can meet with other like-minded young people to work on campaigns and issues in all forms. So basically, if you fit into that age bracket, live in and around Cardiff, and care about… a broad range of stuff, then this is the place to go, to get your voice heard and your opinions counted!

How do you fit in to all of this? We meet on a monthly basis- and if these meetings, or even a few of these meetings and involvement on social media are all you can commit to, that’s fine! Any involvement is great, as we function on having a big group representing the youth of Cardiff, working hard and making change happen! And we do make change happen, which is great, because what we do as young people is important, and deserves to be acknowledged, we deserve to see a response to the things we do! Additionally, we’ll be hurling opportunities your way, of various nature and theme, including exciting and interesting trips and visits, residential outings, and so on! Anybody can get involved- as well as representatives sent from schools and organisations across Cardiff, we’re also made up of lots of individuals from all backgrounds. We want our Youth Council to be as diverse, interesting and varied as our city is.

It’s super easy to get involved- you literally just turn up to one of our meetings! There’s absolutely no commitment to stay if you decide it isn’t for you, and any feedback you have would be appreciated regardless!

The next few dates for our meetings are September 23rd, October 14th, November 18th, and December 16th. Always on Wednesdays, always at the City Hall in Cardiff, always 4.30pm and ending before 7pm! Pop those dates in your calendars or phones, and see how you feel when they pop up! We’d love to see you there, (plus there’ll be free tea and biscuits, always a bonus, right?) We know how expensive public transport can be in Cardiff, in fact, it’s one of the issues brought up regularly in youth council, and we try to offer alternatives. If you present any bus or train tickets used to reach our meetings, we’ll reimburse them, as we wouldn’t like to put you out of pocket!

You can follow us on social media too, @CardiffYC on Twitter and like our Facebook page- We’d really appreciate the support!

Thanks so much for reading this far, and I hope we’ll see you really soon! If you have any questions at all, or if you just want to have a little chat about what we’re about, my name’s Maegan , I’m the chair of Cardiff Youth Council, you can email me on maegandaviesjohn@outlook.com at any time, you can also drop me a message on Facebook or whatever. If you’d like my number to discuss anything over the phone, I can email that over to you too. We’ll look forward to hearing from you!

Thanks again!

Mae and CYC 🙂