To receive a verbal report on the latest activities of the Young Mayor and Young Cabinet.
Minutes:
Young Mayor, Suzie McKenzie, thanked all the young people who had voted for her in the Young Mayor’s election and her teachers and friends from St. Thomas More Roman Catholic Academy for their support. She had pledged to create better support in schools for mental health issues and work on improving and promoting mental health facilities. With more pressure being put on them due to the Covid-19 crisis, she had used social media, blogs and a newsletter to get out positive messages to young people in the borough.
UK Youth Parliament Member, Abi Tang, had pledged to reduce North Tyneside’s carbon footprint and engage young people in tackling climate change and achieving her aims by using social media in giving out advice to people about how we could all keep North Tyneside looking lovely and enjoying outdoors.
The Young Mayor reported on the following activities in which she and Young Cabinet Members and/or Youth Councillors had been involved:
• The Covid-19 lockdown imposed immediately following the elections of the Young Mayor and Youth Parliament had resulted in the initial suspension of the young people’s meetings.
• A virtual meeting had been held with the Members of UK Youth Parliament from the North East region to work on Abi’s plans to roll out projects such as the re-use/refill of water bottles into the North East region.
• The Hawkshead residential was unfortunately not able to go ahead as planned as part of the regional collaborations.
• Abi had taken part in the Carbon Trust’s virtual workshop in partnership with Tyneside Council which was developing a vision statement and action plans for the borough for it to become zero carbon by 2050.
• The Young Mayor had chaired her first virtual Youth Council meeting to discuss how the lockdown had affected them; support for the virtual campaign for free school dinners which had now been agreed by the Government; and ideas on the Poverty Intervention Fund before meeting with the Authority’s Head of Corporate Strategy and Customer Service, having been invited to take part in a Steering Group for this fund.
• Youth Councillors had agreed that they would hold the virtual Youth Council meetings fortnightly to see how they could develop their projects using technology prior to them getting together again in the future.
• The Young Mayor had taken part in a virtual Northumbria Police Youth meeting to talk about the young people’s experiences and challenges during this time.
• Youth Councillors had attended the British Youth Council e– convention.
• Young people from across the North East region continued work on the National Campaign, – ‘Protect our Future’.
• Virtual meetings had been held to enable greater debate and discussion on the national campaign and actions to take forward on the local environment and global climate change. Young people had been consulted on the future of Local Government 2030, which was fed directly into the national commission as evidence on behalf of the British Youth Council.
The Elected Mayor thanked the Young Mayor for the report and both her, Abi Tang for their contributions to the work on the green agenda and young people’s mental health issues.