Your Voice Matters Events – Participants Actions

At the Your Voice Matters event the young people themselves, through their school or youth organisation, volunteered to take action and raise awareness of the issues they thought were important. These actions cover all the issues mentioned above and details can be found below:

 Educational Inequalities

  • Campaigning for educational reform;
  • Raising issues such as work experience, bullying, etc with our school council and Principal;
  • Creating a video on the effects of bullying and how to handle it;
  • Working with the local community to run a cross community course to bring protestant and catholic youths together;
  • Developing a brochure and DVD, promoting online safety from bullying and how to keep your information safe on social networking sites;
  • Promoting education and better awareness of children’s rights;
  • Writing an article for the school magazine to open eyes about the realities of education inequality in NI;
  • Asking the school council to provide more information about the UNCRC.

Poverty

  • Developing a campaign to raise awareness about the issues and the stigma surrounding poverty;
  • Working to create a safe environment for children living in poverty;
  • Working to break down barriers that exclude people in poverty from society;
  • Reporting back to pupil/school council and discuss the issue of poverty in politics society;
  • Organising events to raise awareness of poverty in school and the wider community;
  • Putting a charity that tackles poverty on our charity list;
  • Holding school assemblies for educating on poverty.

 Mental Health

  • Organising a meeting with CAMHS, with a group of young people so we can give our view on how they run their service and help develop and improve the service for other children and young people;
  • To raise awareness of Mental Health problems, within the school environment by:

putting up posters in school;

leading a discussion activity in Form Class;

creating a notice board informing people about Mental Health, and giving suggestions on how you can improve your Mental Health;

speaking in Assembly;

writing to MLAs;

speaking at Pupil Council;

developing a social media campaigns;

  • Deliver presentations and campaign work/charity funding.

Community Safety

  • Raising awareness via campaigning;
  • Developing a youth consultation event;
  • Designing a workshop for different age groups highlighting dangers that make the community unsafe and where they can get help;
  • Holding meetings/events;
  • Developing a drug awareness online quiz to reduce drug use and provide information;
  • Raising the issues within schools and with youth leaders.