Giving young people a voice

Jemma:

I wanted to give young people in the East Midlands the chance to be a part of our journey too.
So, after looking at the various workshops/seminars we'll be going to in Karlstad, I thought it would be a great idea to share the opportunity to interacte with media professionals and young people out there.

We want to take young people from the East Midlands on a 'virtual' trip to the summit.
My idea is to talk to young people about media, their issues with media and children and what they think the future looks like.

I'll then share their voice with everyone at the summit workshops and I'll be blogging the week to keep people up-to-date with what's happening, who we speak to and what they have to say in return.

But, where to start?

Young people's voice

I've been volunteering for my local youth council (Oadby&Wigston) for over a year and I knew they would love the chance to share their voices with a global audience!

At May's meeting I spoke to the group about the summit and gave them the option to give me their ideas/thoughts or questions by writing in a scrapbook, recording a video/podcast or taking photos.

I decided to visit the Leicestershire Youth Council (CYCLE) too. This was a much larger group of young people, who were all very inspiring and had a lot to say about issues around media.

A big thanks to both groups for sharing their ideas with me. I'll be taking the scrapbook, camcorder, dictaphone and camera to the workshops in Karlstad to share your voices with others.

I'll also be asking young people at the summit to feedback on your ideas and I'll post on here during the event so you can keep track of what people say in response to your ideas.

UK Youth Media Council

One of the workshops in Karlstad is entitled "Youth Moving Youth Policies Forward" and I wanted to find out more about this so I contacted the presenter of the session Susana Giner (Institute for Global Ethics UK).

Susana explained that the workshop will be for the youth councils from 8 countries to come together to form a Global Youth Council. She had just set-up the UK Youth Media Council, which includes five ambitious young people aged 18-24.
I was invited to their first meeting on May 20 at the British Youth Council building next to London Bridge.
Susana also said the Global Youth Council will be creating a "Global Youth Media Declaration" at the summit and I was keen to find out more so I went along to the meeting.

UK Youth Media Council (and me!): Back Row - Tom, Tom, Richard. Front Row - Uma, Theone and Jemma (me).

Global Youth Media Declaration

Each of the 8 youth councils from across the world have been asked to come up with five key issues around media and children.
They will all pool their issues together to form five global issues which will make up the declaration.
The declaration will be a list of recommendations for media outlets/organisations and professionals to pledge towards.

For instance, committing to showing ten per cent less of their usual negative news coverage. But that's just an example of mine.

It'll be great to see how the 8 groups come together as one at the summit.

Have YOUR say
If you're a young person and you want to have an input into this event or want us to share your voice please get in touch (jemma@themightycreatives.com) or comment on this post!