Hinckley & Bosworth

Over the past couple of months, there has been a lot of changes that have happened over the past couple of months in the Hinckley & Bosworth area. Young People have had to face some difficult issues and as a result; loss of funding has been cut. This Action Plan is so that the Young People in the Hinckley & Bosworth area can understand what is going on and so that they get all the necessary information and regular updates as to what's going on.

My role in a way is very big part of the Young People in the area as it's my job to tell you guys. I keep in regular contact with all the Student Council Coordinators in the area and make sure that they are getting all the information they need as well to pass it on.

This time of year gets very difficult as there is lots of plans and preparation for when everyone moves on to either a new year group or a new school. One of the key features of your school is that they get as much information as possible from the LA and from the borough council; which is then, hopefully, passed onto you.

The Hinckley & Bosworth Youth Council work very hard to get our views across - but we can only do this without your help and support. As many of you are moving to a different school, we are loosing representatives from over half of the schools in the area.

The Following Schools need to be allocated a representative:

• Brookvale High School - Groby
• Dixie High School - Market Bosworth
• Bosworth College - Desford
• Heathfield High School - Earl Shilton
• Market Bosworth High School
• Mount Grace High School - Hinckley
• Redmoor High School - Hinckley
• Saint Martin's High School - Stoke Golding
• South Charnwood High School
• Twycross House School

If you attend any of the above schools, please do the to get more information about the Youth Council, what we do and who we are.

E-Mail hbyc@thejitty.com and talk to Cassie - Our Chair - about getting involved

Alex - School Liaison Officer

Introduction

Over the past year the Hinckley and Bosworth Youth Council have continued to work with and for the young people from our Borough. We have worked towards many of our objectives set out by the young people of Hinckley and Bosworth from both our Conference this year and last. In this report we will set out to show you our main achievements of this year.

Summary Of Achievements

• Last December we were lucky enough to be given the opportunity to run an Ice Rink in the Hinckley town Centre. Citizens of all ages came to use the facility, donating 50p each admission for charity. From the donations, a total of £690.52 was raised and 50% was donated to the Help Haiti Charity, and the other half went to the Air Ambulance, the Mayor’s chosen charity at the time.

Another purpose of the ice rink was to raise awareness of crime and age barriers. Volunteers from HBYC were situated in and around Hinckley town centre, with key rings and badges. These young people stopped passers-by and offered them these freebies. The badges said “Talk to me”, and the idea behind this was to try and encourage older and younger members of the public to break down barriers and talk!

• During January we were also involved in a consultation regarding “Access to Services” where we discussed future options from a young person’s perspective on services such as libraries, Connexions and the emergency services. We were also able to help widen the consultation group of young people by adding the internet questionnaire to the Jitty website.
• Also during January we took part in our annual team building Residential, this year at Lea Green. It was a particularly productive year, with each subgroup putting together presentations of their aims for the year and bidding for part of our budget to put their plans into actions. (More information about the subgroups below). We also were able to welcome new members into the group and improve our team work during this weekend. A group of HBYC members one evening spent a lot of time learning about where we fit into the Borough Council, learning about the way the Council is run and what we would like to see in the future in terms of the way we work together.
• We have continued to run Teen Nights at Elements Night Club which provides a safe and alcohol-free evening for young people to get involved with. This has proved very popular and we now have over 500 young people attending.
• Our Annual General meeting was held in March where our new Executive Committee was elected, details of which can be found at our home page.
• Youth council representatives also assisted with the council-run Play Day in the summer. We helped run a variety of activities, such as face-painting, den-building and the water slide, and enjoyed it just as much as the children and young people actually attending the day! We also helped with both setting up and clearing away the materials needed for the day.
• Four youth council representatives (Cassie Shilladay, Liam Mawhinney, Xavier Kirkcaldy and Libby Bonner) were involved in this year’s European Project, which ran from the 13^th to the 21^st July. The European project aims to bring together operation. This year it was located in Laatzen, Germany, near Hanover. It was an amazing experience for all involved and has created lasting friendships with people from Poland, Germany, Israel and France. During the trip they had a chance to visit Berlin, Hanover and Laatzen, sample local cuisine and learn lots about all the different nationalities involved. The trip greatly involved most people’s communication skills and confidence.
• Our Annual “Voice of Young People” Conference was held this year at the new venue the “Hinckley Club for Young People”. We had a fantastic day which was extremely effective in setting forward our targets for the next year. We held workshops on the priorities set by young people in the last year’s Conference which were, “Drugs and Alcohol Awareness”, “Travellers Awareness”(which was linked with information about the new Hate Monitoring System) and “Young People and the Media”, where young people explored ways they could do positive things to be reported on instead of complaining about the negative view of young people today.

We were very pleased to be able to hold our Conference at the new HC4YP and were able to help advertise this fantastic new space by being the first group to hold an event there, particularly with so many young people from the surrounding areas.

During the Conference we also set our three main priorities for the coming year, which will become our new subgroups. These were voted for by the approximately 100 young people present at the conference and came out as:

Anti bulling and Stereotyping- we are already in the process of running a Creative Writing Competition on the subject of bullying for years 8 & 9 to raise awareness of the subject and get young people talking about it.

• Safety on the streets- to work towards alternatives for young people drinking in parks/hanging around on the streets. Suggestions have already included more targeted nights at Elements clubs and a video to raise awareness about how to stay safe.
• New Facilities and Cheaper things to do- to include working towards getting a replacement hoist at the Leisure Centre.

We will work towards these aims and have formed our subgroups accordingly for this year.

We hope to continue to work with you to collect the views of the young people of Hinckley and Bosworth and improve life for them and adults alike in and around the town in every way we can!

Report written by:
Chloe Thompson- Ex Chair of the Youth Council
Cassie Shilladay- Ex Vice Chair

At the recent HBYC AGM, elections were held, and after voting the results were shown, so here is the HBYC Exec 2011.

Chair - Cassie
Vice Chair - Xavier
Treasurers - Katy and Dan
Jitty Officer - Keiran G
Press and Publicity - Courtney
Community Forums Officer(s) - Bobbie
Communications Officer - Liam
School Liason Officer - Alex
Inclusion Officer - Kieran D

Congratulations to all the everyone who won the election for each position.

By Keiran

Following our conference for school councils last October, 3 new subgroups were formed according to what the young people thought were the most important issues in the area.

The new subgroups are:

• Safety on the Streets (SOS).
• Facilities.
• Anti bullying and stereotyping.

All of the subgroups have got straight on with planning and putting into action new projects for the year, to try and make a difference for young people in the Hinckley and Bosworth area.

SOS:

Safety on the streets aims to introduce more measures to help young people feel safer on the streets, there main aims are:

• Produce a video of tips of how to stay safe whilst on the streets. We plan to have this completed by the end of the period. This is their main project.
• Create business cards with useful numbers that a young person may need whilst on the streets.
• They also plan on going into schools to discuss street safety.

Anti Bullying and stereotyping:

Their main aim is to create an effective way to combat bullying and stereotyping in schools.

They plan to run a mini conference to discuss their ideas.

Facilities:

The facilities group’s main aim for this year is to try and improve publicity for already existing facilities for young people in the area, rather than trying to create new ones Also, they would like to make sure that the special needs lift in the Leisure centre is fully operational and ready to use at all times.

There is also a connexions subgroup, in which youth council members work with Chris, a connexions worker, to try and improve connexions, find out young peoples knowledge and perception of connexions, and to get more ideas form young people for the service.

A lot of work has already gone into all of these plans by every single subgroup; but there is a lot more to come, especially on our fast approaching residential weekend, on which a lot of these plans will be put into action to get changes made!

Courtney Stephenson; Press& Publicity HBYC.

The votes have been counted and we are pleased to announce the results.

Members of Youth Parliament

• Karishma
• Poppie
• Helena
• Todd

Deputy Members of Youth Parliament

• Andrew
• Tamsin
• Omar

Thank-you to everyone who stood and everyone who voted.

Discuss these results on the forums

This year’s conference was a huge success, but as always, this didn’t happen easily. Months of planning from the whole youth council went into making the day happen, so a huge thanks to everyone, young people and youth workers alike.

CONFERENCE DAY:
On arrival, a few hours before the conference was due to start, everyone got straight to work, with a conveyer belt system for filling folders, nervous but excited vibes flying around the room, accompanied by everyone running up and down stairs, in and out of rooms, making sure that everything would be done on time. One thing is certain; everyone was definitely giving preparations 100% effort.

Schools were arriving quick and fast, and after a few minutes of sign in, everyone was shown to the main room, where Chloe and Cassie gave an excellent opening talk before everyone went off to their first workshop.

Young People in the Media Workshop;
Liam led the workshop with great enthusiasm, and his leadership skills grew throughout the day, as he got more familiar with the material. This workshop was all about the media’s impression of young people, and how young people can get good publicity, rather than trying to change the Medias impression of us. The workshop involved finding articles in newspapers and talking about them, as well as the participants’ impression of young people today, using art and annotations. Overall, I think this was the most energetic workshop of the day.

Stop And Tell:
This workshop was based in the large dance studio, one of the many amazing facilities in the new “Green Towers” youth facility. The group seemed extremely focussed and engaged, especially after an interesting ice breaker to get everyone ready.
The workshop had a powerful message, hate crime and bullying using prejudice against travellers as an example, and the groups responded well to the seriousness of the subject, and treated it appropriately.

Anti Drugs and Alcohol:
This energetic workshop was led by Xav, using hard hitting facts teamed with exciting, modern fact games; match the drug, inflatable question balls and a “fruit salad” style ice breaker. Although alcohol and drugs are commonly discussed in schools, this particular workshop seemed to get through to the participants.

General Day:
The day was an amazing success, with excellent feedback & promising participation in the priority setting section of the day, and those priorities should be set using the notes taken from that feedback very soon. Overall, the group of young people seemed very responsive, and everyone involved put their all into the day, and should be extremely proud of their achievements.

By Courtney
HBYC Press Officer.

Today, The HBYC went for a look around the Multi-Million pound HC4YP Building which was built at Richmond Park in Hinckley. The grand was fantastic and had lots of visitors. The Outcome of the event seemed really popular and they had alot of people join up for their facilities like the gym and the Music Studio.

My personal opinion was that the building was fantastic in every way – It has something for everybody’s taste from a climbing wall to a biking track, sports hall to Function room. It’s amazing. The only thing I was bothered about is the way they weren’t counting people coming in etc. which would’ve been good for the results and made a chart or something to reflect on with the amount of visitors there were.

The HBYC will be holding their annual conference there this year and will show to us all the outcomes of the place and to see if it actually worth all the money. The building seemed rather large and it would be a question to see if we can all keep it under control

By Alex Mc
S.L.O – School Liaisons Officer

At the recent HBYC AGM, elections were held, and after voting the results were shown, so here is the HBYC Exec 2010.

Chair - Chloe
Vice Chair - Cassie
Treasurers - Libby and Katy
Jitty Officer - Keiran
Publicity Officer - Karl
Community Forums Officers - Bhavik and Bobbie
Communications Officer - Liam
School Liason Officer - Alex
Inclusion Officer - Xavier

Congratulations to all the everyone who won the election for each position.

By Keiran

From the 19^th to the 24^th December, HBYC ran an ice rink that was open to the public; and it proved a huge success.

On the first day the mayor opened the event, and the fun began!

Citizens of all ages came to use the facility, have a laugh on the ice and soak up the festive atmosphere, whilst also donating 50p each admission for charity.

From the donations, a total of £690.52 was raised and 50% was donated to the Help Haiti Charity, and the other half went to Air Ambulance.

Another purpose of the ice rink was to raise awareness of crime and age barriers. Volunteers from HBYC were situated in and around Hinckley town centre, with keyrings and badges etc. These young people stopped passers by and offered them these freebies.

The badges said “talk to me”, and the idea behind this was to try and encourage older and younger members of the public to break down barriers and talk!

As well as this, there were keyrings with slogans like “hide me!”, on the subject of crime, as recent information has shown that the method of breaking and entering, and then proceeding to steal keys on show, resulting in the theft of cars and other vehicles has risen. These keyrings were a simple idea to remind people to put their keys away, and out of view.

By the end of the week we were running out of theses items and crime was DOWN 50% in the area over the period of time the ice rink was in place! I think we can call that a success!

Finally, a HUGE thank-you to all the youth council members, youth workers and everyone else who gave up their time to help out; and thanks to you, the public who contributed their hard earned cash for two great charities.

Thank-you to all!

By Courtney

Hi all and welcome to the HBYC January news feed, which gives you information about recent activity amongst the youth council, and up and coming projects.

Firstly, our Ice rink was a great success, with people of all ages turning up to have a go and enjoy the winter weather. Have a browse round the HBYC pages of The Jitty and you will find a report about the opening of the ice rink, and watch this space for a report about how successful the event was!

Our most recent meeting was the 4th of January, and a representative from Leicestershire County Council to talk to us about how we felt about access to local services, such as Connexions and the emergency services. He asked us a few questions, and there was a general discussion. Hopefully, there will be more of this in future updates.

The main sub groups, anti-bulling & racism, drugs & alcohol, and facilities gave us all a brief update on what they had discussed in their sub group meetings beforehand, and what their projects were for the coming months.

Our residential is fast approaching, and everyone going seemed enthusiastic in the January meeting. A mysterious cannon challenge was on the agenda, with Malcolm acting very mysterious... All will be revealed in the next news feed!

I hope you all had a great Christmas and A Happy new year, and hope to see you at our next meeting which is the 8th of February, from 5:30pm until 8:30pm at the Hinckley Council Offices.

Taxis can be arranged through HBYC, for more information contact us.

By Courtney