Agenda and minutes

Councillor Members of the Youth Cabinet are asked whether they have any interest in any item on the agenda and if so, to formally declare that interest.

There were no declarations of interest made at the meeting.

The Minutes of the last meeting held on 3 November 2021 are attached.

The minutes of the previous meeting were agreed as an accurate record.

There were no matters arising.

Youth Council members along with other young people attended Bury’s Youth Climate event.  The young people discussed with councillors and officers how Bury could become more sustainable. Chad McDowell, Climate Action Officer attended the event and explained how carbon monitors are being used in schools.  Chad McDowell has taken suggestions that were shared at the meeting to see if these can be implemented within Bury.

Maddie has e-mailed Councillor Quinn with specific ideas around climate change and will hopefully receive a response before the next meeting.

A Hackathon event took place at Salford University. The young people that attended the event had a tour around the campus. On the outside walls and roof of the building there were living walls. These walls were low maintenance and self-sufficient, there were tanks under the building that retained and reused any water. There was a climate justice speech followed by a session where the young people had an hour to come up with ideas around climate change. Maddie’s group put forward an idea to have living walls at bus stops, it was suggested that these could be sponsored by local businesses and would be good way to get local communities involved in a project. It was explained that living walls increase rainwater retention by 75%.

It was explained that the PHSE takeover day took place and was attended by 40 young people. The young people learnt about the life span of a human and highlighted the key points of a life. The task generated ideas of what the young people thought should be included in the PHSE curriculum. The young people ranked the sub-topics of PHSE from the most to least important and took part in a drama exercise to highlight what makes a good and bad PHSE teacher. In the afternoon session, decision makers joined the event. The information and ideas from the event will be produced into a report with the aim that schools will adopt these ideas.

Youthforia is an event for Youth Cabinet and Council Members across the North West to share ideas. Each event focuses on a different topic; it is a way of learning about different campaigns and getting involved in different projects. Last month a workshop took place in Italy to share ideas of youth service engagement, from the event young people from different European countries attended and shared different practices and ideas used in their country. Different campaign ideas were shared such as one around raising awareness of blood donations, and voting at 16 years old.

A Youthforia event was held at Oldham Council which was about making campaigns more inclusive. After the workshop, the elections for the steering group took place, this was to decide who was going to represent Greater Manchester, along with other areas in the North West. The steering group runs the Youthforia meetings.

The make your mark campaign is run yearly. Each year, young people vote on different campaigns that they would like to run, the most popular campaigns are focused on for the rest of the year. 

Topics are usually suggested during a trip to the House of Commons. This year the topics have been decided by an online vote, which ended on 1^st December. The most popular topics from the online vote, will be added to the ballot paper and then young people will have from 1^st - 28^th February 2022 to vote on the campaigns which are most important to them.

There was an information day that took place on Tuesday. Anyone wishing to stand at the election was encouraged to attend. Emma and Ella were at the event to answer questions and to give an overview of what is involved. Information packs were given out and a video was shown. Anyone wishing to put themselves forward needs to create a 75-word manifesto of why they want to be elected. Photos of candidates were taken in the Council Chamber which will be put up, so young people can see who they will be voting for. On 10^th February there will be an election and votes will be counted. The results will be announced on 11^th February at 5.00pm. The candidate will be elected for a 2 year term.

All committee members took part in a festive quiz which included a picture round, a music round, a general knowledge round and a film round.

Youth Cabinet members took part in the debate.

Discussions took place as to whether the voting age should be lowered to 16. There were reasons for and against the voting age being lowered:-

• It was suggested that by lowering the age to 16, younger people could gain an interest in politics.
• Voting is important and the voting age should stay at 18.
• At 16 years old you should be focusing on studies and not how you are going to vote.
• If the voting age was lowered to 16, peer pressure on which way to vote was discussed.
• Voting at 16 could force adulthood.
• The importance of unbiased political education in the PHSE syllabus was discussed.

A vote was held, and it was agreed by a majority vote that the voting age should be lowered to 16 years old.

It was agreed:

1. That the next debate would be if universities fees should be free.

It was agreed at the November Council meeting that the Children and Young Person’s Scrutiny Committee are to co-op two additional members to the committee. One member is to be the Chair of Youth Cabinet and the other member will be a representative of a Teachers Union. Georgia, the Chair of Youth Cabinet will be invited to all future meetings.

It was agreed:

That Georgia, the Youth Cabinet Chair will be a co-oped member of the Children and Young Person’s Committee.