Local Democracy Week
15 - 19 October 2007 - Take Part - Take Power!
The Local Democracy Campaign 2007 aims to:
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make councils more relevant and useful to young people;
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encourage young people to 'take part, take power';
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make Local Democracy Week bigger and better than before;
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increase councillor involvement in citizenship teaching in schools;
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get councils to devolve power, wherever appropriate, to local people.
What is Local Democracy Week?
Local Democracy Week is a national event to help young people aged between 11 and 26 become more involved with decision-making and planning at a local level. The theme is "take part, take power".
What did we do?
The Torfaen Young People’s Forum has been in existence since 2005. It is a forum that gives young people living in Torfaen and aged between 11 and 25 a chance to have a say in issues that affect their life, a chance to meet other young people living in Torfaen and find out their views, a system where they can influence the people who make decisions and a chance to plan and take action on issues that are important to them.
People on the forum act as representatives for their school council, youth group or other organisation. They bring issues to the forum and feedback to their group on issues that are being dealt with by the forum.
Since its inception, the Forum has been involved in recruiting senior officers of the council, has held seminars on anti-bullying and sought proactive action, and been consulted on a number of issues by the local authority and other bodies such as the NHS.
The Forum will be officially launched on Wednesday 31 October 2007 in Cwmbran Town Centre and the Congress Theatre during Youth Work Week, and the Forum will undertake this launch and any ensuing publicity using a new logo.
In order to choose the logo, they wanted to hold an election in as many schools, colleges, youth clubs and other organisations in Torfaen as possible during Local Democracy Week with the count of all the ballot papers taking place on Friday 19 October 2007.
The elections were multi-channel with traditional ballot papers, ballot boxes and booths in schools during lunchtimes, drop off boxes at youth centres and other organisations, and an online poll on the home page of Webster|, the authority’s community portal.
The entire programme was devised and planned by young people and was facilitated by them with the help of officers from the Children and Young People’s Framework Partnership and the Democracy Division.
How did it go?
A total of 28 boxes were delivered to venues throughout the borough or taken into schools and 883 votes were cast and counted. The winning logo is shown below and received 69% of the votes.
The full list of who took part, the overall result and the results from each venue| are available below.