Background of "The Jitty"

The Leicestershire Community Strategy identifies that

“…the people of Leicestershire want young people to have access to co-ordinated information, advice and support to enable them to make informed decisions at key points in their life, for areas such as lifelong learning, employment and skills.”

During the “Young Persons Citizens’ Jury event run at Quorn Hall (19th and 20th November 2002), the participants identified a need for a “Countywide portal website”. In order to achieve this, a commitment was made to develop “a website with young people providing information and links that are young people friendly”, co-ordinated by a webmaster.

The initial lead for this project was undertaken by Oadby & Wigston Borough Council, who approached a professional web design company (Cuttlefish) to produce “The Jitty”. Leicestershire County Council is now leading this project with the support of a number of organisations.

The aim of the youth portal development was to produce a site that served as a gateway enabling young people to access information relevant to the issues that concerned them. This information would be from official sources (government agencies etc), and from the peers of the intended audience.

At the start of the academic year 2004/2005 the Jitty had three contributors, no members for the chat forum, and received less then 50 visits a month. At the end of the academic year 2004/2005 the Jitty had thirty six contributors, 109 members for the chat forum, and had 1396 visits in March.

In the Summer of 2007, on average, the Jitty had just over 20,000 visits a month, and has an extremely lively and friendly chat forum with a number of users from around the County of Leicestershire, as well as some from around the UK.