Youth Parliament
Who are we?
Central Bedfordshire's Youth Cabinet
“We are the representatives for young people in our area and we’re here to voice the needs of our community and represent the views of young people.”
Meet the members
Find out more about your Youth Parliament candidates by clicking the link below
Make Your Mark Results
The results are in for the 2022 Make Your Mark vote. Thanks to everyone who helped promote the Make Your Mark vote, for the schools that took part, and of course to the young people who took the time to vote!
The top 3 issues, as voted by young people, in Central Bedfordshire are as follows:
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Environment
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Health & Wellbeing
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Covid-19 Recovery
Health & Wellbeing has been voted the number 1 issue for young people in the UK in 2022. On the 4th November the UK Youth Parliament met in the House of Commons to debate what issue under this topic will the UK Youth Parliament's campaign should focus on for 2022 and the campaign that was chosen is:
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Cost of Living Crisis
To find out more and watch the debate, please click the link below.
Our Achievements
Crisp Packet Blanket
Central Bedfordshire Youth Parliament collected crisp packets from around Central Beds and spent a day washing, cutting, and ironing together the crisp packets into insulated blankets. The crisp packet blankets were then donated to the Salvation Army to be given out to the people they help.
Black Lives Matter
Following the events of George Floyd's death at the hands of the police in America and the subsequent social movement taking an active stand against racism. Central Bedfordshire Youth Parliament chose to devote some additional time to meet and discuss how they can help to actively challenge racism within their communities so that no-one is disadvantaged or actively discriminated against on the basis of their race or the colour of their skin.
As part of this campaign Central Bedfordshire Youth Parliament achieved the following:
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Held a "Walk for Equality", walking 10 miles through Greensand Country raising £275 for Show Racism the Red Card
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Held a BLM film and chat night in Dunstable, free to all members of the community, as part of Black History Month
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Created a BLM information leaflet to inform people about the movement, which you can view below
High Sheriff Awards
In March 2020 the Central Bedfordshire Youth Parliament received 2 Highly Commended Awards from the High Sheriff. The first award was given to Youth Voice for their collective hard work campaigning in 2019. The second award was for their campaigning work on knife crime alongside the Jodie Chesney foundation. Due to lockdown the young people received their award in a virtual awards ceremony (pictured).
End Period Poverty
Youth Parliament teamed up with Young Healthwatch Central Bedfordshire to campaign around making sanitary products free and available in schools. In March 2019 the government announced plans to ensure that sanitary products will be made free and available in all UK schools. This is a massive victory that we were proud to be a part of!
For schools wanting to sign-up to receive government funded sanitary products you can find out more information and how to sign-up here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/period-products-in-schools-and-colleges
Mental Health Report
The Youth Parliament surveyed over 1200 young people to get their views of the current Mental Health services. From the survey we produced a report which has been presented to MPs, the director of Children's Services for CBC, the management board, and others.
Our recomendations were as follows:
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A step-up, step-down system to ensure more young people have some support.
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Peer Support Network to be setup within schools
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Parent support groups estabilished across Central Bedfordshire
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A targeted Mental Health campaign at young males
SRE in School
As part of the "Curriculum for Life" campaign, which was voted for in the 2017 Make Your Mark consultation, the members' of Youth Parliament agreed that Sex and Relationship Education (SRE) was an important part of moving towards a curriculum to prepare young people for life after school. As such the youth parliament joined in with many other organisations to call for the government to make SRE compulsory in all schools.
On March 1st 2017 this campaign was successful and the government passed an amendment to make SRE compulsory. Whilst we are pleased with the success of this campaign our work continues as the government consult on what should be included in a 21st Century SRE curriculum.
This is an important milestone on the journey towards a Curriculum for life which we will continue to work towards as a collective Youth Voice.
Get in Touch
If you have an idea or thought on what needs changing in your community we'd love to hear from you. Fill in your details here and we will be in touch soon