youth forum – Page 2 – Cardiff Youth Council

CYC’s Stuttgart Adventures: Installment drei!

October 28, 2015October 28, 2015Cardiff Youth Council

So, it’s time for the third installment of Adventures of CYC in Stuttgart!

We began the day by spending a few hours in Stuttgart’s zoo; where we saw vibrant flamingos, adorably cuddly gorillas, munching fruit bats (who are far from the scary blood sucking stereotypical bat), exotic bird species from tropical areas of the world, and many more.

The zoo was highly enjoyable and even for those who weren’t head-over-heels for animals before, I think it’s safe to say that there’s definitely a new found soft spot for at least some these beautiful and majestic creatures. (ft. Stuttgart’s very own Dory and Nemo – safe and sound)

One of our CYC members, Luke has a new found friendship with this fluffy mammal. Meanwhile, this undying love between Mae and Alaw was rediscovered.

Our mischievous mob did have to bid farewell to the zoo and move onto the next element of the day; the city tour! This was our opportunity to see and view all the great projects that our counterparts are working on currently. And so it starts…

One thing all touring members did notice was the fantastic amount of artwork around the city. Albeit, graffiti, street art, architectural prowess or just the skyline at dusk.

All of our members left this inspiring tour with a fresh view on urban life. We had the opportunity to see one of Stuttgart’s many urban rooftop gardens, which now, of course in the midst of autumn, has been turned to a venue available to hire for those parties or gatherings you may wish to host.

Even this seemingly plain multistory car park holds so much creativity, on the walk up you would just see sneak peaks of each individual artists stamp on their area.

Just along the outskirts of this carpark was one of the projects Jugendrat Stuttgart had been working on for 3 years. Consisting of Dutsch inspired skate ramps which doubled up as a ‘chill zone’, 3G Football pitch and a wall for legal graffiti.

To end our hectically busy, yet highly rewarding day, we wound down and visited a youth centre on the other side of the city and cooked our own meals. After filling up on lots of scrumptious food, games of pool were played while our 2 lovely singer song writers accompanied us with more of their original creations.

Thank you Stuttgart for another wonderful day!

Make Your Mark

September 2, 2015September 2, 2015Cardiff Youth Council

Hey all!

If you’ve been to any of our events lately, or seen us around the streets of Cardiff, you may already recognise these lovely little ballot papers- you may even have filled one in for us. Which can only mean one thing- it’s time to Make Your Mark! Yearly, these ballots are released to the local youth forums around Britain by the UK Youth Parliament, meaning young people have a say in what is discussed by members of the Parliament in their annual House of Commons debate. It also decides what issues will be campaigned on across the UK. Basically, this is pretty big stuff, and takes nothing more than a tick, or a click, to complete!

The scheme is the largest youth consultation of its kind in the UK. Last year, 875,000 11-18 year olds voted, the highest number of young people ever consulted as part of the scheme. But we think we can do even better, this time, and their target is to reach out to, and collect votes from 1,000,000 young people.

Cardiff Youth Council wants to make sure that we share this enthusiasm. Last year, the votes of 2,152 people were collected, a 6.9% turn out for young people in Cardiff. We can do better than that, right!? Especially when it’s so ridiculously easy to get involved.

For those of you who haven’t had a chance to fill out a ballot yet, here’s how it works– it’s super simple! The paper consists of a choice of 10 topics, which the UK Youth Parliament identified as key issues prioritised by young people. You vote for the one that you think is the most important, the one that needs the most focus (only one, one only, such a tricky choice!) When these votes are collated and counted, the top ones will be discussed by the Youth Parliament in the House of Commons, on November 13th as part of Parliament week.

Last year, in Cardiff, the top two topics voted for were Mental health, and Curriculum for life. This was the foundation of the two successful campaigns we have been running in CYC over the last year, which we’d be happy to answer any questions about, and will talk about in further detail in future posts.

If you’d like to vote right now, click here. Forward this link to any people, groups or organisations in your network of the right age, and encourage anybody you know to take part… let’s hit that target, let’s get Cardiff’s voice heard.

Thank you to everyone who’s taking part- hopefully we’ll see you on the 23rd, where our next meeting at city hall will be held, 4:30pm, be there!

Any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch, email me at maegandaviesjohn@outlook.com, or get in touch on Twitter or Facebook! You can find out much more about Make Your Mark and the UK Youth Parliament here.

Thanks again!

Mae, Fiona 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 🙂