I’m sceptical about the votes for 16 year olds campaign - partly because I think it only appeals to/is of interest to  a particular group of young people (but then you might say the same for adults!), partly because I don’t think it will achieve its stated aim of making young people more interested in politics, and partly because I think its another example of making children into adults in order to participate.

Currently theres too much focus on this last approach. I think probably its an easy option - how do we get young people to participate? Well lets get them to do it like adults do! Wrong, wrong, wrong!! Let children be children and let them (somehow) participate as children (or young people).

So the votes for 16 campaign is interesting because you could argue that young people at 16 are not able to participate in the political process because they can’t vote - their views count for nothing. My argument, until now, is that the emphasis should be on supporting them to influence politics in ways other than voting - however an article on the Childrens Particpation blog throws up a completely different way of looking at things.

What if all children  and young people could vote? - votes for 6 year olds!! Continue Reading »

We’ve now uploaded film clips from all of the different workshops from the Practical Ideas for Participation event in October (click here to see them all). If you don’t have time to go through all of them heres a 2 minute film summarising the event!…….

I posted a couple of films on the YoMo Network showing Hans Roslings statistics programme about the development of the third world.

Heres his follow up to those with the theme’ the seemingly impossible is possible’ (and randomly some sword swallowing!).

He has some very interesting arguments. Namely that Africa is developing but its naturally far behind the ‘developed world’ (ie. you can’t just throw a load of money at it and expect everything to be ok), and that every rich country became rich by increasing Continue Reading »

4Youth are a group based in South Ward Neighbourhood, Weston-super-Mare
They are currently in the process of developing a local youth forum that can help influence changes in the community. The local area has been awarded £3.7 million to improve quality of life for local residents and they would like young people to Continue Reading »

Practical Ideas for Youth Participation was an event organised by YoMo in October 2007. If you would like help to organise your own events, a quote for bespoke training or to discuss potential partnership work please contact us at info@yomo.co.uk

Practical Ideas for Youth Participation was an event organised by YoMo in October 2007. If you would like help to organise your own events, a quote for bespoke training or to discuss potential partnership work please contact us at info@yomo.co.uk

Practical Ideas for Youth Participation was an event organised by YoMo in October 2007. If you would like help to organise your own events, a quote for bespoke training or to discuss potential partnership work please contact us at info@yomo.co.uk

Practical Ideas for Youth Participation was an event organised by YoMo in October 2007. If you would like help to organise your own events, a quote for bespoke training or to discuss potential partnership work please contact us at info@yomo.co.uk