Highland Youth Gets a Voice at Council Meeting
Highland Councillors were given a presentation today (Thursday) on the issues that young people in the Highlands say are important to them.
They heard from Highland Youth Convener, Catriona Burns, who has been in post since 1st September, and representatives of Highland Youth Voice, the Highland’s Youth Parliament, Magnus Monahan and Brianella Scott, of Dornoch Academy
Catriona is the full time representative of young people at the Council, having a vote on the Education Culture and Sport Committee and the Joint Committee for Children and Young people and attends Full Council.
Catriona explained her role in her talk. There has been much interest about the post – locally and nationally and the council is the only council in Scotland that has such a post. The project has recently won a Highland Council Quality Award and is in the running for a COSLA Excellence Award.
She encouraged councillors to engage with young people in their own setting sometimes, in a way that the young people feel comfortable with, to talk to them about the issues they care about. She added: “Because young people have been so excluded from the world of politics in the past, they simply won’t come and engage with formal, adult systems. They need you to come to them. Engaging with people when they’re young will prevent them feeling disconnected and lead to a generation of motivated adults, involved in public life, with perhaps even more of an interest in voting or politics. I really believe that if young people get the chance to talk to the people who have power over their lives and can begin to put right some of the issues that trouble them, we can ameliorate the damage those things cause, and give them a more positive future.
“It’s often said that “young people are our future”, but I don’t really like that phrase. Not just because it’s cheesy and cliché but because young people are also our present too. We deserve a say in the decisions that affect us and the services we use, not just youth facilities but also mainstream services, because we use them too. Young people can help to solve the problems we have in our communities today, and need to be seen as part of the solution, rather than just the cause of trouble.
“While we recognise and value the experience and knowledge adults bring, young people are also such an important group, not just in terms of our needs and demands, but also because we bring vitality, new ways of thinking and have such a valuable contribution to make to our communities and society. Please listen to us.”
Highland Youth Voice has approximately 100 members from across the Highland area and Magnus and Brianella talked about what’s important for young people in Highland today.
This was followed by some music with Ickey MacDonald of Glenurquhart High School, performing his own “beat boxing” version of “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” followed by Emily Mackinnon and Sally Swanson, of Inverness Royal Academy, singing "Hallelujah" in Gaelic.