to take over the baton from Tabitha Balogun and David Abadir, to represent Cardiff in the UK Youth Parliament. Tabitha and David will still be performing their duties until the end of term as they support Connor and Victor in planning ahead for the coming year.

On Wednesday, March 14th the Cardiff Youth Council (CYC) elections for the UK Youth Parliament took place with 13 Candidates putting themselves forward for election. All candidates delivered a speech in front of the whole of CYC to say why they wanted to, and should be, elected as a member of the UK Youth Parliament (MYP).

The candidates were:

Connor Clarke Ibrahim Osman Yasmin Bahary Ahmed Drah Rhys Pinder Yusuf Yusuf Sumaya Abdi Tamara Pereira Ffion Morris

Alana Ellis Victor Ciunca Rose-Marie Melhuish Ffion Humphreys

CYC and Cardiff Youth Service congratulate all candidates for putting themselves forward in such a courageous way and for delivering some inspiring speeches.

Connor Clarke and Victor Ciunca were duly elected

Members of UK Youth Parliament Elected

C A R D I F F Y O U T H

S E R V I C E

A C T I V E

I N V O L V E M E N T

T E A M ( A I T )

Shout out O C T 2 0 1 7 — M A R 2 0 1 8

UK Youth Parliament Elections

Newly elected MYP’s Connor and

Victor

Connor and Victor with current

MYP’s Tabitha and David

UK Youth Parliament Candidates - Yusuf Yusuf, Rhys Pinder, Ffion Morris, Ahmed Drah, Connor Clarke, Alana Ellis,

Yasmin Bahary, Ffion Humphreys, Victor Ciunca, Sumaya Abdi, Tamara Pereira and Rose-Marie Melhuish

P A G E 2

place in November 2017 within the House of Commons.

From August until October 2017 Cardiff Youth Council (CYC) supported the Make Your Mark Ballot.

Across the UK 954,766 votes were cast by young people which means that 1 in 6 11-18 year olds voted this a year, a turnout of nearly 17%

In Wales 42,353 votes were cast equating to an approximate 16% turnout.

In Cardiff 10,177 votes were cast equating to a 32% turnout which is the highest return of ballots in Cardiff for any year so far, and is also the second highest turnout (as a percentage of eligible population) in Wales, behind Torfaen at 48%.

Cardiff Youth Council debated and discussed the results and decided to set up four working subgroups to look at each of the top four priorities which are:

Work Experience, Transport, Mental Health & Curriculum For Life.

Make Your Mark gives a unique opportunity to reach out to young people who go on to be opinion formers and leaders of the future.

This year, through school, online and grassroots, Make

Your Mark reached out to young people across the UK. The ballot decided what Members of the UK Youth Parliament should debate and vote on to be their campaign for in 2018. The debate took

Cardiff Youth Council Set Priorities

Issue Number of

Votes

CURRICULUM FOR LIFE 1538

MENTAL HEALTH 1340

WORK EXPERIENCE FOR 11-18 YEAR OLDS 1318

TRANSPORT 1226

FIRST AID FOR ALL YP 1215

VOTES AT 16 1018

PROTECT LGBT+ 958

MAKE INVISIBLE VISIBLE 578

SUPPORT YOUNG CARERS 540

PROTECT SCHOOL BUDGETS 387

SPOILT BALLOTS 57

ONLINE BALLOTS 2

S H O U T O U T

CYC Priority Subgroups

S H O U T O U T

Work Experience The subgroup have met to discuss this priority on a number of occasions and have also spoken with their peers, siblings, older/former pupils. The general agreement is that young people feel that gaining experience in the work place is important and that there are not enough opportunities for them to engage in work experience. Work experience should not just be about taking a week out of school to complete a work placement, it could be about ongoing volunteering opportunities, taster sessions or internships. It could be part of a vocational course where the curriculum requires young people to engage with employers or have a practical application.

Key Messages From Young People

Work experience is no longer offered through many schools as it has seen its value reduced with the introduction of Welsh Baccalaureate. This should be addressed as gaining work experience is important to young people.

Young people want more organisations, businesses and schools to take ‘work experience’ more seriously by offering more opportunities.

When young people try to gain employment they are often told that they do not have enough experience, this is frustrating and needs to be addressed.

Young people would like the quality of the placement to meet their needs. Far too often young people find themselves in a work placement that has nothing to do with their interests or what they had requested.

Young people want placements to be meaningful and provide real experience of the work place, far too often they find themselves onlookers and not really gaining any true experience of the role.

As part of the Welsh Baccalaureate young people have to do some form of volunteering but an inconsistency across schools in Cardiff has been identified where some schools will, and some will not, Allow their pupils to do their hours during school time or support the young people in securing placements.

Many young people have siblings who, when they

were in school, were offered work experience and this was undertaken during school hours. The feeling is that it is unfair young people no longer have the same opportunities.

Work Experience has been in the top 5 UK wide priorities in the Make Your Mark ballot 4 times in the 5

years since the ballot has been running.

The subgroup is now working alongside ‘Fixers’, an organisation that help young people to fix their futures by using their past.

Fixers choose the issue they want to fix and, using the skills of a team of creative experts, they work out how to make sure their message is heard by the right people, whether that’s through a unique film, a leaflet or poster campaign, a website, an event or workshop. Then they use digital, print and broadcast media to make their voice heard as far and wide as possible.

P A G E 3

Curriculum for Life The curriculum for life group has

been working towards pro-

moting the website, Tools4life

that was created last year and

coming up with ideas to make it

known to as many young people

as possible. Another area the

group have been looking at is

the Welsh Baccalaureate. After

attending a conference held by

the Children’s commissioner for

Wales, Sally Holland and Profes-

sor Donaldson to look at the

reform of the curriculum in

Wales, it was apparent that

those who attended did not feel

the benefit of the qualification

and thought it was putting them

at a disadvantage to non-welsh

students applying for University.

The group have now decided

this is something that they want

to work towards improving and

are currently arranging to

meeting with the Vale Youth

forum to work together.

Check out Welsh Government’s

Curriculum for Wales’s blog post

around January’s event:

https://curriculumfor-

CYC Priority Subgroups cont...

P A G E 4

S H O U T O U T

wales.gov.wales/2018/03/05/voices-of-children-and-young-people-in-the-new-curriculum-for-wales/

Members of the group also

attended the Convention 3 Con-

ference to prepare for the

MYP’s day of action. Members

worked throughout the day

looking how they can work on

the top two issues of the Make

your Mark campaign – Votes at

16 and Curriculum for life. The

group then presented their ide-

as and created pledges for the

day of action.

P A G E 5

S H O U T O U T

Inspection of the Emotional Wellbeing services delivered by Change Grow Live & Commissioned by Cardiff & the Vale University Health Board

Members of CYC have been passionate about the opportunity of working closely with the University Health Board in the commissioning of an Emotional & Mental Health Wellbeing service in Cardiff and the Vale.

CYC members took part in an inspection of the Service as it enters its third year.

As part of the inspection process CYC members met and held discussions with the team at Change Grow Live, who run the service, as well as taking part in an information session which looked at what the service offers.

In addition to this CYC members have looked over Case studies, Annual reports and the Original Commissioning specification document.

The inspection took place over the period of a week, with members attending an information session which was held during the evening and attending a staff meeting which was held during the day time. CYC members were conscious that they wanted to fit into the working patterns of Change Grow Live so that they did not disrupt the services being provided to young people and their families.

Once the group had concluded the inspection, and having reviewed the additional information, members came up with a series of points and recommendations which have been shared with both the University Health Board and

Change Grow Live.

We will update you on the outcomes and responses form both the UHB and CGL in our next edition of the shout out.

Mental Health

The CYC Transport subgroup

have been working with Cardiff

Research Team to develop a

survey around transport issues

in Cardiff.

Transport was voted in the top 3

issues in this year’s Make Your

Mark ballot. CYC convened a

group of members committed to

looking at the issue and the sur-

vey was the first task at hand.

‘We needed to find out more

CYC Look To Improve Transport

CYC Priority Subgroups cont...

P A G E 6

S H O U T O U T

details and what the issues actu-

ally were’ said subgroup mem-

ber Ben Turner (15).

With the help of secondary

schools across Cardiff over 2,400

young people aged 11-18 com-

pleted the survey, a massive

thank you to all those who took

part!

CYC members are now looking

at the data and have a meeting

in the diary with Cabinet Mem-

ber for Transport Councillor Ca-

ro Wild to share the key find-

ings.

This will be good timing as

Councillor Wild has a consulta-

tion paper on his Environment

and Transport ideas so hopefully

the work of CYC will help shape

the transport policy of the fu-

ture.

Folli Fest—Castle Takeover CYC members working in partnership with Are You Lost yet and CADW arrange the first music festival of its kind in the amazing surroundings of Castell Coch on Friday the 10th of November 2017.

Billed as a “Youth takeover of Cardiff’s fairy-tale castle”, Folli Fest had 70 acts perform over 5 stages on he night with everything from spoken word, folk, rap, rock, ska and hiphop and a diverse range of roaming acts including installation art, takeaway portraits, zine making workshops, a street art exhibition and hula hooping.

With over 200 tickets the event was a sell-out. Youth groups along with members of the public came to watch some of Cardiff best young talents.

Hip-hop headliners on the Gwirvol Bandstand Main stage Dirty Alex were joined by indie outfit Sock, folkrock band Curious Orange as well as CYC very own members playing in their bands Main Offenders and Y Safle Nesaf.

Upcoming acoustic acts playing in the Acoustic Kitchen include Selena

in the Chapel, Araby, The CVC, and Builders of the Boat.

The Radio Platfform stage featured 30 Cardiff MCs performing in the Drawing Room of the Castle, including Chew, Enbe, RazzKid and Lucas Rowe, and two of the rappers behind the song ‘Capital’ Noah Bouchard and The Forgotten. The stage was run in collaboration between the WMC’s Radio Platfform project, city centre youth project Grassroots and youth music group Ministry of Life.

The JUKE spoken word stage will be headlined by Roundhouse Poet Sarah McCreadie, Tongwynlais local TurnaPhrase and award winning one man theatre show StammerMouth, whose show was humorous journey through the struggles of having a stammer. It will feature ten other young poets from South Wales.

There was an amazing buzz and excitement about the event, being able to take in so many different types of experience as you visited each of the stages. Another experience was that of

the freshly made pizza being cooked in the dragon wood burning pizza oven provided by ACE communities first situated near the main stage was a big hit with both members of the public and performers alike.

Over the 100 young people took part in the planning and

developing of the idea of Folli Fest and roles included production and set up, stage managers, publicity team, artist liaison, front of house and of course performers / artists.

We would like to take this opportunity to that our partners and sponsor, Are we Lost Yet, CADW, GwirVol, Cardiff Council Special Events Team, Cardiff Youth Service, Ministry of life, Grassroots, Radio Platform and 11th Hour Events, who without them this wouldn’t have been possible.

P A G E 7

S H O U T O U T

S H O U T O U T

90 representatives from schools and colleges came together at City Hall in December to discuss Cardiff’s Well-being Plan.

Participants took part in a series of creative workshops and discussions, with a view to design their own version of a Well-being Plan.

Connor Clarke (16) said ‘Today was not only fun but it was important, as young people have the

opportunity to share their views on significant plans for the city’

After receiving a presentation on key data for the city, primary and secondary pupils worked together to consider the definition of well-being and how it affects citizens. They then looked at each section of the Well-being Plan and worked up a range of solutions to help meet the challenges.

The final part of the day saw

members of the Public Service Board join the event and receive a series presentations from participants outlining their top solutions for the city.

Maria Battle, Chair of the University Health Board and PSB Vice Chair said ‘The young people were fantastic, the passion and attention to detail was really impressive’

The ideas generated by the C&YP will now be considered as part of the wider consultation around the Well-being Plan.

Cardiff Wellbeing Plan P A G E 8

Grand Council Event

P A G E 9

S H O U T O U T

the UK under the banner of Commonwealth Big Lunches.

Millions of people across the Commonwealth came together as part of an international initiative launched by the UK Prime Minister Theresa May.

Commonwealth Big Lunches, created by educational charity the Eden Project in partnership with the UK Government, encouraged

people to get together to celebrate their Commonwealth connections through food.

The launch comes as the UK is set to host the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, bringing together up to 52 leaders from across the Commonwealth to London and Windsor from 16-20 April 2018.

CYC Attend Commonwealth Big Lunch

On 12th March, Daniel Burton, Edward Jones and Connor Clarke, members of CYC, attended a lunch with Rt Hon Alun Cairns MP, the Secretary of State for Wales.

The lunch was to celebrate Commonwealth Day and was one of a number of lunches held around

Is This a Sign of Things to Come? David Abadir, MYP for

Cardiff sporting the classic

casual pose outside no.10

yesterday before meeting

the PM. As you do like.....

As a part of the lead up to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) and the Commonwealth Youth Forum in London, young people from across the UK met the Prime Minister and Lord Ahmad, Minister of State for the Commonwealth, in celebration of Commonwealth Day. The reception, which took place at 10 Downing Street, was hosted by UK Young Ambassador to the

Commonwealth, Namir Chowdhury.

During the reception,

organised by the British

Youth Council and the

Cabinet Office, the Prime

Minister stressed the

importance of young

people being “at the heart”

of the summit. Young

people present were able

to ask Lord Ahmad and the

prime minister a series of

questions prior to joining

Her Majesty the Queen and

other distinguished guests

for the Commonwealth Day

Service at Westminster

Abbey.

P A G E 1 0

S H O U T O U T

Families First is a Welsh Government funded project working across all local authorities in Wales. In Cardiff it provides support to families with children who are facing difficulties, particularly to those on low-incomes. Support is provided through various projects, activities and training and is delivered by Cardiff Council, charities and other third sector organisations.

Cardiff’s Young Commissioners have been working very hard over the last couple of months getting ready to help commission out a new set of services across

the city.

20 children and young people have been recruited to take part in the project and they come from various Primary & Secondary schools across Cardiff.

Young Commissioners have been

finding out all about Families First and have undertaken a training program and residential to find out about commissioning, Children’s Rights, participation and what Cardiff Council Children’s Services want out of the Families First programme.

As part of their training residential the group participated in various team building activities as well attempting to reach the summit of Pen-Y-Fan on a very cold December afternoon.

Their training included presentations from organisations around the four commissioned service areas, which are:

Early Years’ Family Support Service

Family Wellbeing Service

Health Relationships Service

Youth Information Service

The young commissioners worked alongside various professionals in

different fields as well as the commissioning team based in Cardiff Council to score applications and presentations submitted based on a criteria and scoring matrix. During the project young people met with their professional counter parts to take part in consensus meetings to discuss scores and rationales.

The Project was officially launched by Cabinet Member for Children and Families Cllr Hinchey and Children services Operational Manager OM Angela Bourge on the 11th of January 2018 in County Hall where the young commissioners were presented with their Certificates and T-shirts.

S H O U T O U T

P A G E 1 1

"Through young commis-sioners I gave gained many interpersonal skills and it has been so much fun work-ing on the project. As a young person it is difficult to have your voice heard or think your opinion matters, but young commissioners opens a new door for young people to experience deci-sion making and voicing opinions. My experience was so enlightening and informative, the residential really pushed my limits and helped me realise the value of team work and how to guide and understand young people. The official process

of commissioning allowed me to understand how cer-tain aspects matter and how the council runs most of these projects, an insight that would be impossible to gain without young commis-sioners. Overall not only did the program help us young people develop and expand our skill range but involving young people with making decisions that affect them promises better outcomes of services commissioned. The experience is nothing that I would ever experience again truly unique and crucial to create more informed adults.”

Yasmin—Lead Young Commissioner

Yasmin, 16 Cardiff With Cllr Hinchey

run in schools and communities across the city over the discovery phase.

Our Child Friendly City Action Plan will outline how we aim to embed children’s rights across public services and wider part-nership including workforce training, policy development, rights respecting politicians and active participation of C&YP.

Our engagement phase has high-

lighted three key areas of work to focus on during the CFC pro-gramme these are Education, Family and Belonging and Health.

This Digital Child Friendly City Flipbook captures an engage-ment session with 120 pupils from the Fitzalan Cluster. This will now be used to influence the development of the CFC Action Plan.

Thank you to all the pupils and staff that took part in this im-portant work.

To see the work developed by the children & young people please follow the link to our flip-book.

https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/59990565/cardiff-a-child-friendly-city

Fitzalan School Cluster Conference 2018

As Cardiff advances its ambition to become globally recognised as a Unicef Child Friendly City, it is important to remember that in-volving children and young peo-ple in the design and shaping of the city is central to a child’s rights approach.

Our CFC programme of work is built around the views of chil-dren and young people with vari-ous engagement sessions being

P A G E 1 2

S H O U T O U T

Cardiff is working

towards

international

recognition as a

’Child Friendly City’

A Child Friendly City

There has been significant pro-gress in the work towards em-bedding children’s rights and Cardiff becoming globally rec-ognised as a Unicef Child Friendly City.

A wide range of adults from across various sectors have signed up to Child’s Rights in Practice training. We have set ourselves the challenge of getting 500 people trained up in the first year of the CFC pro-gramme.

The interactive training provid-

ed by Unicef will enable partici-pants to gain knowledge and un-derstanding about children’s rights as well as a child rights approach in their specific role.

We have already started delivering training to elected members with the second round of councillors being trained in February.

One councillor’s feedback suggested ‘it was the best training he ever had!’

round of councillors being trained in February.

The CFC 500 Challenge!

CFC Accelerator Areas Finalised

We can now officially an-nounce that the 3 areas where Cardiff will focus their efforts for a child’s rights approach will be Health, Education and Family & Belonging.

This will be alongside manda-tory work around developing a rights based culture in the city,

communicating about the im-portance of children’s rights and the city’s leaders working together to make sure C&YP are involved in decisions.

The next few weeks will see all the details in each area devel-oped and published in a Child Friendly City Action Plan.

Watch this space!

P A G E 1 3

S H O U T O U T

CFC School Engagement

We are pleased to report that the CFC school engage-ment programme is going from strength to strength.

Throughout January and February pupils from a fur-ther 11 primary and sec-ondary schools have the opportunity to feed in their views to the Child Friendly City programme.

Pupils from 6 primary schools have been working

with creative practitioner Bill Taylor-Beales to identify what a CFC looks like from their perspective. The ses-sions involve creating a Tower of Words which is a piece of 3D artwork captur-ing key messages from the session.

Other schools have been running Community Enquir-ies to enable pupils to philo-sophically work through key

areas they would like ad-dress by the CFC pro-gramme.

All the findings from these process will be fed into the action plan development taking place in March.

Well done to all involved!

For further information on Child Friendly City contact LeePatter-son@cardiff.gov.uk

P A G E 1 4

CYC Visit Sister City Stuttgart

So some of you may have read the title and thought, ‘Stuttgart sister city…what’s all that about?’ Well for those of you who did think that here is a little back

ground. Cardiff and Stuttgart, Germany have been twinned as sister cities for over 60 years now. There are many ways that this partnership has been active over the years.

To carry on this tradition 14 CYC members traveled to Stuttgart in the February half term to meet up with mem-bers of Stamhiem Jurgenhus, a youth centre in the District of Stamheim.

CYC received an invite from Micha Klamm, of the Stuttgart Youth Service, stating they would be welcome to come any time.

With this offer in mind CYC then highlighted some funds, sort authorisation from youth service management, choose represent-atives and organised the study visit.

Micha Klamm, put together a programme which showed the visiting group a wide range of

CYC—Outside Cardiff Museum, waiting to embark on their trip to Stuttgart

S H O U T O U T

Stamhiem Jurgenhus

P A G E 1 5

projects and a chance to meet with young people and workers to share their experiences.

The first morning CYC headed off to the Rathaus, their equiva-lent of City Hall, for a tour and to meet Roland, the Lead Worker for Stuttgart Youth Council. Roland took CYC on a tour of the Rathaus and to vari-ous projects around the city that SYC had been involved in. It was very interesting and in-formative, it taught CYC how the Stuttgart youth council works, its influence in decision making and and their relation-ship with the City Mayor.

The following day CYC were given a tour of Grundschule Stammheim, a primary school, arranged by the school worker Fitch. CYC also had a dialogue session with students and it was great to meet with the chil-dren and for them to be able to practice their English speaking skills. They had so many ques-tions for CYC, all about our country and our lives there. CYC taught them about Cardiff and also taught them some Welsh. Many of CYC gained pen-pals during our visit to the school as they were enthusias-tic to stay in touch.

The same evening CYC attend-ed the Stuttgart Youth Council Elections and a reception at the Rathaus, where CYC were hon-orable guests. CYC engaged in conversation with many of their youth council members. Some members of CYC ex-changed details in order to stay in touch for when they visit Cardiff in July/August.

The following day CYC visited the state parliament building and met Brigitte Losch, a Mem-

ber of their Green Party and the deputy leader of the state parliament. Bridget took CYC on a tour of the building and answered questions.

On the last day in Stuttgart CYC had some free time to explore the city centre, buy souvenirs and visit the main library, which was such an extraordi-nary building.

In the afternoon CYC went to Jugendtreff Sieben Morgen where they were introduced to OpenMike, a graffiti artist who gave CYC a lesson on how to draw in a graffiti style and worked alongside them in de-veloping and designing a large scale graffiti mural about CYC’s time in Stuttgart.

For a full account of CYC’s time there you can visit https://cardiffyouthcoun-cil.com/2018/03/12/cardiff-youth-council-exchange-to-stuttgart-february-2018/

Cardiff Youth Council would like to thank all the young people, staff and centers that made the exchange possible with special thanks to our wonderful friend Mr Michael Klamm from Stam-mheim Jugendhaus, who with-out him this exchange would have not been possible.

CYC at the State Parliament Building

S H O U T O U T

CYC Graffiti Project

Cardiff Youth Council, Join The Conversation…..

Blog: cardiffyouthcouncil.com/

Tweet: twitter.com/cardiffyouthcouncil

FB: facebook.com/cardiffyouthcouncil

Tube: youtube.com/user/CardiffYouthCouncil

Dates of upcoming meetings: April 18th June 20th Venue: City Hall Times: Arrival at 4.30pm Meetings start by 5pm. Finish 7pm dates for all CYC meetings can be found on our blog or Facebook

Cardiff Youth Service Active Involvement Team (AIT) Grassroots 58 Charles Street Cardiff CF10 2GG

Young Interviewers

Cardiff Youth Council Young Interviewers worked alongside colleges from Children’s Ser-vices to conduct interviews for positions within both the Ado-lescent Resource Centre (ARC) and Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) Prevention Team. The adverts for the posts of Sup-port Worker received lots of attention with a range of great

candidates being shortlisted. Six candidates were successful in be-ing chosen to attend interviews for the roles with-in both teams.

Each interview consisted of six separate tasks, one being a traditional interview style question & answer activity, while others had the candi-dates making posters and be-ing creative. The scoring for both sets of interviews went on late into the evening, at City Hall, but the team was fuelled by Sub-

way sandwiches. ARC Team Manager Carys Da-vies said ‘The Young Interview-ers were great, we couldn’t have done it without them’. The ARC provides integrated support for young people, aged 11-17, who are at risk of becoming looked after by the local council (LAC). It provides an outreach service for fami-lies in crisis and works both within the Centre and at the family home if required.

Interviews

taking

place at

City Hall

‘The Young

Interviewers

were great, we

couldn’t have

done it without

them’. Carys

Davies—ARC

Team Manager

The iSay Ambassadors have been busy this term vis-

iting more schools learning all about Children’s rights,

democracy and participation. The iSay Ambassadors

have engaged with nearly 1500 children and young

people and are looking forward to working and

meeting more children and young people in the New

Year. We will be looking to work with school councils

to help develop their skills to develop effective school

councils for your school. If this is something you would be

interested in, or want the iSay Ambassadors to visit your

school, then please get in touch with Sophie

(Sophie.jones@cardiff.gov.uk) or like our Facebook page,

I Say Ambassadors.

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