The Democracy Awards 2018

Thursday 12th June 2018, Eight schools attended the 2018 Democracy Awards in Portcullis House, London: Ormiston Six Villages Acadamy, The Regis School, Felpham Community College, Malais School, Shoreham College, Bourne Community College, Steyning Grammar School, Davison High School; all receiving an award for their contributions to the West Sussex Youth Cabinet and to the Youth Parliament. This ceremony was led by the Chair of the Youth Cabinet: Ellie Roberts and the Leader of YP and YC: Caz Henry-Evans. All these schools received awards whether it being a Certificate of Excellence or a Gold/Bronze Democracy award for taking part in the YC/YP election process by the number of votes they managed to give. For example Ormiston Six Villages received a gold award for 98% of the school voting!

The Event

Caz breifly welcomed everyone to the event and introduced us to the chair of the Youth Cabinet: Ellie Roberts, who basically ran the whole thing (well done to her). Then, the youth representatives and the teachers of the schools all had a speech prepared and read it aloud to the audience. Annie MacIver spoke about the WS Perspective for a little bit and Elaina (from the BYC) also spoke but about the National Perspective. Caz then spoke about how you can get involved (which will be an image down below!). Then, Tim Loughton (MP for East Worthing and Shoreham) began the awards ceremony and began a speech before everyone then received an award. Then there was a photo opportunity where everyone had their photo taken with their school and one as a congregation, all with their awards.

Other Opportunities

Because we finished early, we were given an exclusive tour of parliament with Tim. We visited the building built an extremely long time ago- even survived The Blitz- unlike the Victorian section which is crumbling down (eg. Big Ben). We also found out that Portcullis House was a newly built section of Parliament that was built directly on top of Westminster Tube station, which meant it had to be bomb-proof, slowing down the building process. MPs in Portcullis House now don’t sit in rows of desks, like in the old building, they now have separate offices to work in.

Images 

Shoreham College

Steyning Grammar School

Felpham Community College

Ormiston Six Villages

Bourne Community College

Millais School

The Regis School

Davison High School

How you can get involved:

If you and your school would like to get involved with the Youth Cabinet and the Youth Parliament, to receive and award and voice others opinion, get in contact with Caz down below!

Thanks for reading our blog.

-Josh Patterson