NWL Youth Conference - 06-11-09
This is the 4th Youth Council Conference run by the well established North West Leicestershire Youth Council, and this year’s venue is the surprisingly large Margaret’s Street Church Youth Centre, and the attendance is excellent numbering in the region of 60 young people. Today has extra significance because it is 11 million day, the brainchild of the department headed up by Sir Al Aynsley Green, where young people are encouraged to participate in a wide variety of decision making processes.
Councillor TJ Pendleton opened the conference with a brief presentation on the importance of what the young people can achieve as being part of the Youth Council, and why they should be a part of the Voice of Young People, clearly an issue the Councillor is passionate about. He was open and honest about the decisions that have to be made in the current economic climate, and the young people attending appreciated the honesty and gave him a round of applause.
Christine Fisher, Chief Executive of North West Leicestershire Council followed on the theme, pleaing for the young people to seize the opportunity to get involved and make difference in their local communities and get involved with the Youth Council.
The very first icebreaker of the day was quite energetic affair and at first no one was sure what to do, but eventually everyone got the hang of it. Everyone in the room (notably not the staff *cough cough*) had to stand in two lines facing each other, when an action was shouted, everyone had to follow, for example “hand to hand” the pairs had to put their hand on their partners’ hand. When “people to people” was shouted, you had to swap partners as quick as possible, the slowest people went out.
The second part of the icebreaker was for each table to create their ideal Councillor out of balloons, sticky tape, rubber bands, paper clips, paper and fluffy balls. These ranged from “Derek” who had lots of hot air in his head so he could talk lots, to “Fantastic Fred” with big ears so he could hear everything and the “Youthinator” who is inflatable so he can take in a lot of information. Although the session was very light hearted, reading between the lines, there were some very insightful views of what young people either wanted from a Councillor or what they thought of Councillors.
For the “Pyramid of Participation” (POP) presentation, the Youth Council decided to be different to the point of being daring, so instead of showing the POP video, behold, the NWLYC acrobatic display team! A live explanation of the Pyramid with human pyramids showing the different levels of the POP (bottom level – School Councils, Scouts etc, middle level – District and Borough Youth Councils, and the top level – CYCLe).
Following the short break, the Chinese Pictures icebreaker was run. Same principle as normal Chinese whispers except there is no whispering. The person at the back was shown a picture, and they had to draw it on the back of the person in front with their finger, and the front person had to draw the picture on a piece of paper for the table facilitator to see if it was close to the original.
For the Cyber bullying presentation, Ant did a small quiz to see how much everyone knew about the subject before explaining in detail about what it is. After a short explanation, the answers to the quiz were given out, before a very short debate with the use of three scenarios, closely followed by a list of things that should be done in order to prevent Cyber Bully occurring. After this, the young people were given a board with various different things on, and they had to build their dream community with a budget of £40m.
After lunch the work began on identifying the priorities for young people in North West Leicestershire. The session was called changes, with the first part being a challenge to the young people to write down things that they’d like to change about themselves. This ranged from wanting to be smarter, taller and in one case less mean. As a group bit of work this took some courage to do but surprisingly they all contributed. This was then developed into what they would want changed in their local area. These will help form the priorities for the Youth Council over the coming year.
All in all this was an excellent conference, with a friendly atmosphere. The balance struck between being serious, and having fun was spot on, so well done NWLYC!!.
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