WELCOME
Apologies : Dylan H.
The meeting started off with Youth Councillors and Staff introducing each other, and mentioning something they have done in the past couple of days.
RIO FERDINAND FOUNDATION
Victoria Lowe from the Rio Ferdinand Foundation came to the meeting tp discuss young peoples usage of technology. RFF is a charity that provides leadership opportunities for young people around Greater Manchester. Oldham Council has invited the RFF to work alongside its partners to build a program around digital and tech skills. For more information on the work of the Rio Ferdinand Foundation, head to http://rioferdinandfoundation.com
Victoria put to the Youth Council a set of questions to answer, to help with the foundations research on what should be included within the program. The questions were:
- What do you use your technology for everyday?
- What do you find challenging about tech?
- Are you aware of career paths into the tech industry?
- If the RFF & Partners were to bring some sort of digital project to Oldham, what should it involve?
The Youth Councillors who attended the meeting were able to give their opinions to Victoria, which would contribute to the research being done with a variety of youth groups within Oldham, and help shape the structure of the project.
TEN FORWARD
In the previous Youth Council Meeting (01/04/20), Youth Councillors were set the task to ask ten young people, who lived within Oldham but were not on the Youth Council, what change they wanted to see within Oldham, and what OYC should focus on within the new term of office. From this, Youth Councillors came to this meeting with a few ideas on what should be focused on. Some of the general areas that were raised were;
- LGBT Education
- Represent Young People
- Mental Health (Coping Mechanisms)
- Improve Appearance of Oldham
- Votes at 16
- General Awareness Raising of Services
- Prices and Reliability of Busses
- Young People missing out on opportunities
- Safety
- Homelessness
- Hate Crime
- Discrimination
These formed the foundations of a discussion on what the two main priorities should be for 2020/21. The Make Your Mark report for 2019 was also used to add in topics young people of Oldham deemed important to them. This led to the five topics for discussion being Safety, Improving Environment, Mental Health, Discrimination, and Transport.
With these five topics at hand, Youth Councillors were placed in break rooms, and were given the chance to discuss on the issues they believed OYC should go forward with the main priorities.
It is important to note, that whilst OYC will be selecting new priorities, the Youth Council will still continue with work already occurring, and will work on other topics that the young people of Oldham deem important, these topics can be seen within our Manifesto.
After the break room discussions, Youth Councillors were brought back to the main meeting, and each group were asked to feed back on what their group believed should be the main priorities for 2020/21. Within the feedback, it was highlighted that Discrimination was brought up by all groups. This lead to a unanimous vote by Youth Councillors to take forward as a priority for this term of office.
For the second priority, the floor was opened to Youth Councillors to put their reasonings forward for why Oldham Youth Council should focus on one of the four remaining topics. After this, a vote was concluded on what topic should be taken forward, with the doing being:
- 0 VOTES FOR TRANSPORT
- 4 VOTES FOR ENVIRONMENT
- 9 VOTES FOR STREET SAFETY/KNIFE CRIME
- 13 VOTES FOR MENTAL HEALTH
This means that Discrimination and Mental Health will be the main priorities for Oldham Youth Council for the term of office 2020/21.
TAKE PART OLDHAM
The volunteering website takepartoldham.volunteermakers.org/get-involved has been taken over to show activities for young people and families to do whilst in lockdown, and it was put to the Youth Council to put forward some activities for the website.
GMYCA UPDATE
Liam gave an update to the Youth Council on the work being done within the GMYCA meetings and working groups.
EVENTS AND TRIPS
Events Officer Karl gave out dates and times of events being ran by the Oldham Youth Service team.
AOB
Wellbeing Officer Isaac is bringing back OYC’s creativity website oldhamyc.com/creativity , and has asked Youth Councillors to submit some creative items for the website.
Liam brought up potential activities being ran over the weekend by Youthforia NW, in replace of the Resi supposed to be happening at the time.
