To receive a verbal report on the latest activities of the Young Mayor and Young Cabinet.
Minutes:
The Young Mayor reported on the following activities in which she and Young Cabinet Members and/or Youth Councillors had been involved:
• Youth Councillors had made a good start on the new ways of working with the committees and collaborating with adult decision makers.
• The Environment Committee had met with the Cabinet Member for Environment and Transport, senior officers and environmental sustainability team, sharing common ground on figuring out how they could support each other moving forward, in focusing on the plastic free coast campaign, general behavioural change in communities and the development of the Eco Schools Green Flag scheme.
• The Emotional Wellbeing & Mental Health Committee had met with the Cabinet Member for Public Health & Wellbeing and the Director of Public Health, to hear first-hand what the Authority and Barnardo’s partnership had planned for young people returning to school. They had identified that young people needed to know where and how to get help. They had recommended that this was done through a consistent and regular promotion of services as they wanted to develop and promote exercise and sporting opportunities for young people in the borough as it was known this could make people feel so much better.
• The Improved opportunities committee had been researching the access to and availability of period products in schools and wanted to make this better for young people. They were creating packs with guidance for each high school, middle schools and colleges on how to improve the availability and to remove the embarrassment from what was a natural health need for young women and girls.
• The BAME committee had begun working on a film about young asylum seekers and refugees who were living in the borough. The film would be used to educate students about the facts around these experiences. Group members had also been involved in developing the BAME task force logo, strapline, and hashtag.
• The Enterprise and Education committee had worked hard on their children’s illustrated book project which aimed to explain to young children in an engaging way about the important issues which were affecting them, and thanked members of North Tyneside Business forum for all their practical help and support.
• The Equalities Committee had looked at sexism in schools and were continuing their research into any differences offered by schools in terms of activities for boys and girls. The committee had also looked at the feedback that they had that in some schools, girls were brought out of lessons to have a uniform inspection and were interested to explore any impact on their education and whether this happened to the male students too.
• Youth Councillors had taken part in a consultation about Mouth of the Tyne Festival which had been carried out by Helix Arts, on why some people were not attending and to find out what the barriers were to preventing people from participating, and were interested to hear more about the outcome of the consultation.
• Youth Councillors had been taking an active role in a Voice consultation around how Covid 19 was affecting young people, facilitated by Children North East.
• Member of UK Youth Parliament, Abi, had met with Sir Alan Campbell MP to discuss climate change and the environment, financial education in the curriculum. Young People and their mental health after covid. They also talked about the economy, unemployment, job prospects, and the impacts on young people.
The Elected Mayor thanked the Young Mayor for the report.