youth community participation

Just before I left high school I became involved with my local youth council. Six years later, I am still invovled as an advisory member. So it's no wonder I want to get more young people involved in my community! That's what I decided I wanted to take action on earlier this year...but to be honest unfortunately, a bunch of things slowed this down...so this is how it all happened...

What did I plan to do?
I planned to research local opportunities for young people - looking at where and how these opportunities can or are being advertised in the community e.g. are there any community notice boards, through schools…
I wanted to encourage young people I know to take up these opportunities and tell their friends, brothers and sisters about them.
I also planned to think of some new marketing ideas for my youth council – how can we make ourselves more known in the community? And then I wanted to implement at least one of the marketing ideas if approved by council.

The action I have been able to take so far...
I discovered there is a noticeboard near the library, and then you can also post stuff in the library too. So this may be somewhere we can post info about our youth council and about events and programs for young people in our local area.

I updated our WYC site info so that it was up to date! I put an invite on there to try to get people to our AGM so they could consider joining…I also updated a list of events we have worked on over the last year so that people could see we are still active and planning things in our community.

Liased with our Youth Services Coordinator to mention to her that I think someone needs to say something encouraging to members at the AGM - so during my chairpersons report I focussed.

I have been along to some meetings at council in regards to a new youth services site that is going to be created for Willoughby council. I was involved in brainstorming what kind of info and format the new site should have - including how WYC will be involved in the content and support of the site. This site could make us more well known! But with a new youth specific site rather than a link for the official council website, hopefully we will be attracting more young people to find out about things happening in thier local area.

The plans to come up with some new marketing ideas with input from the committee fell through. We had a change of staff in the youth section of our council and our planning day for 2006 has only just happened (April!) - it was postponed at least 3 times! So with all this it was difficult to get some changes and fresh ideas happening! But the day finally came when I raised my issue to the committee; they all thought it was a great idea and were eager to start planning a campaign and events for the next 18 months. First up with are writing an introductory letter to relevant departments of council, our local library, and all the youth and community services/clubs we could think of in our area - hopefully this will raise our profile in the industry and community if we gain the support of some people in the industry! And then we will start planning our first event for the year - our annual youth forum.

The impact I want to achieve...
I want to know that I have helped at least one young person to get active in our community in some way. Hopefully also I can help some young people to be more familiar with the youth/community services in our area so they can seek future opportunities on their own.

The impact I want to see in my community...
I want to see an increase in youth awareness and participation in my local community. Whether that means more young people seeking and accessing opportunities, ort simply a greater attendance at youth events in our area, that would be an awesome outcome!