The Oldham Youth Council elects Youth Councillors into 3 types of roles to help with its efficient running. These roles are shown below
Leadership Roles
These roles include:
- Youth Mayor
- Youth Mayor Elect
- Chair
- Vice Chair
Each year in January OYC elects a new Vice Chair with the current Vice Chair becoming Chair and current Chair becoming Youth Mayor Elect. In the June of the same year the Youth Mayor steps down and Youth Mayor Elect is sworn in to become Youth Mayor. In this way a Youth Councillor has at least 2.5 years experience and support before becoming Youth Mayor.
Representative Roles
Currently OYC have 3 types of representative roles with each role having 2 representatives. The roles are:
- Members of Youth Parliament (MYP)
- Deputy Members of Youth Parliament (DMYP)
- Greater Manchester (GM) Reps
Each year in February we elect 2 new DMYPs, with the current DMYPs stepping up to become MYPs. We do this so that Youth Councillors have a year of shadowing before having to work at a National level with the UK Youth Parliament and British Youth Council.
Our GM Reps take on work regioanlly to do with the 10 Greater Manchester boroughs. Primarily this work is with the Greater Manchester Youth Combined Authority (GMYCA) that works directly with the GM Mayor.
Officer Roles
Each year in February OYC elect Youth Councillors to take on specific jobs to aid with the running of the Youth Council’s work. Before the elections the roles are reviewed with roles being removed or added depending on their effectiveness over the past year.
As of 2022, OYC have 5 officer roles, which include:
- Communication (Comms) Officer – who leads on communications
- Campaigns Officer – who overlooks, plans & organises OYC’s primary two campaigns
- Priorities Officer – who overlooks other OYC priorities
- Events & Wellbeing Officer – who looks at the mental health of Youth Councillors and plans & organises events
- Inclusivity Officer – who overlooks all processes to ensure everyone is included, regardless of characteristics
Who does what?
To make sure that opportunities are open, and to stop Youth Councillors taking too much work, rules were developed with the constitution. These are as follows:
If a Youth Councillor holds a leadership role they cannot hold a representative or officer role.
A Youth Councillor may only hold one representative role at any time. If they hold a representative role they can also hold an officer role.
Youth Councillors can hold more than one officer role