75% of young people involved in the UK Youth Parliament apparently believe the planet can only survive for another 50 years in its current state. (Taken from a survey held at their ‘annual sitting’.)

We’ve done bits of work with various factions of the UK Youth Parliament but I’ve never been involved with any of their annual sittings - I would expect though that given these are young people in a role to represent the views and concerns of other young people, that when they do meet to discuss such important issues they get the support of experts in the topics they discuss. So presumably when discussing environmental attitudes they were able to grill experts about what those risks are and to ask fundamental questions like is the planet really in danger? or is it that the planet will probably survive but the human race may not, and so on.

Assuming this is the case isn’t it a bit surprising that in the survey the person who apparently the UKYP members feel has the most power to influence young people regarding climate change is………………. David Beckham?!

Now in terms of media influence it may still be understandable to choose a high profile celebrity - but I can’t help but wonder whether theres a responsibility here for young people representing others to be able to take their inspiration from experts in the relevant fields - and to then inform other young people about who those experts are so that they base their decisions/opinions on credible information, not media puppets.

You can see more about the UKYP Annual Sitting on their website

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Tags: campaign, environment, Participation & Citizenship, policy, politics, Society & Issues, youth work

Tristan Donovan wrote an interesting Opinion piece that you can see here. His original question was

• Are we getting older sooner or staying young longer?

I thought it interesting anyway because I think maybe the answer is both. Often I’ve wondered whether children “grow up” too fast, I also sometimes question if youth work may even hasten this with so much emphasis on ‘empowering’ young people.

In the rest of Tristans article he discusses how proposed restrictions on under 18 year olds seemingly contradict the campaign for 16 year olds to be able to vote. I’d agree that it would…… that is if you agree with the premise that you should reach a magic age and then all the entitlements of adulthood are yours. On the otherhand you may argue there should be a gradual transition of responsibilities - in fact perhaps there already is if you look at this post showing the different ages at which young people gain legal responsibilities.

Although reading through that list doesn’t give the impression that it was planned to be a system to support young people to take on increasing responsibility until becoming a ‘full adult’ - instead it looks more like people randomly deciding ages they think may be suitable for certain things.

Arguably this is also whats happening right now - on the one hand theres the camp that argue young people should be able to vote at 16, and then there are those saying 18 year olds are not yet capable of drinking alcohol responsibly or purchasing knives etc. Nobody though seems to have taken an overall view and said what is the best process through which we can support young people to take on all of these responsibilities, and in what order or priority are they handed over to them?

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Apparently in Scotland they’re about to announce that under 21 year olds will be banned from buying alcohol from off-licenses - you can hear the news item over on BBC

I’ve noticed for a while in supermarkets they say you have to prove your age if you look under 21, and recently there were suggestions it might become if you look under 25 - but you still have the right to buy it if you can prove you are 18.

I think it would be interesting to see a poll for 16 - 25 year olds to ask how many would want the right to buy alcohol at the legal age and how many would like the right to vote at 16 and compare the results!

Actually I’m listening to that BBC interview as I write and somebody’s just made the point that its ‘absurd’ that people old enough to vote won’t be able to purchase alcohol. It seems to be yet another inconsistency in deciding at what age young people actually become adults. Although of course its already accepted throughout the world that you don’t need to be an adult to have sex (see this post).

So soon the running order in Scotland for taking responsibilties will be:

• Have Sex
• Vote (a couple of years later)
• Buy booze from the local shop (3 years later)

Actually now it makes perfect sense - I can see that in Scotland soon no young people will be drunk so they won’t have irresponsible sex and they’ll take a greater interest in politics! Or has nobody noticed those drunk kids in the park on Friday nights aren’t actually 18 anyway?!

Having made the comparison between wanting to vote and wanting to drink, I wonder for how many people they felt the first time they were legally allowed to drink in a pub was their transition to adulthood and how many felt it was their first vote?

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I caught this on BBC the other morning:

“I think children act like adults at an alarmingly early age,” said Dame Jacqueline Wilson, who has sold more than 30 million books. Her remarks came as a poll by her publisher suggested that more than half of parents believe childhood is now over by 11.

Which is of course a clever bit of publicity to launch her book. But it’s an interesting topic and my first thought was that its true - childhood and something I’ve long had a problem with is the tendency for work done with young people to put them in positions of adult responsibility (rather than allowing them to participate as children/young people).

Once I got off my high horse though I thought back to the children we work with in Malawi - their education finishes at primary level and then they may have to fend for themselves or even support their siblings. Then I thought its not so long ago children in this country could have been in a similar situation - the school leaving age was younger, think of the workhouses and what about the age of (more…)

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Heres a short clip of an interview with one of the members of Donegal Youth Council, taken from unused footage from their training with us in January 

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Film from the recent training with Donegal Youth Council in Ireland

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The Final Research Report based on the ‘Apprentice Trainers’ involved with the Young Movers programme is now available.

The Apprentice Trainer Programme was our way of training up young people to deliver the training on our courses. The programme was never originally designed to be led by young people - our focus was to provide good training courses. We started by using the model used on the adult programmes at the National Communities Resource Centre which is to tender out and bring in external consultants and trainers. As we ran courses this way we also started to get an interest from people wanting to volunteer for courses - so we took some of these on and then eventually there came a point where I realised we should be making better use of the skills that volunteers had. So we did this bit by bit and then we got to a point where I got the most involved volunteers together and asked them if they thought they were capable of running courses themselves. A small group of us led a few courses and then finally we got (more…)

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You may have already seen the films of the Candidate Speeches for Cheshire Youth Parliament. Before the young people standing for election get to this point they attend a Candidates Weekend. All young people in Cheshire can attend the Candidates Weekend and over 2 days we provide some training to help young people consider whether they really want to stand for election, and if so what they would stand for.

Some of the criticisms of the Youth Parliament system are that its not truly representative and that the people that get elected are just elected on the basis of how many friends they’ve got. The Youth Voice team in Cheshire have been working really hard to ensure this isn’t what happens up there. Prior to the weekend they organise meetings at youth clubs in each region to encourage young people to attend the training. The training activities we use include (more…)

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