Youth Cabinet Campaign Updates

By Anah Zakeer on January 8, 2021 • ( 0 )

Whilst 2020 was unconventional to say the absolute least, we’ve set the foundation for many of our brilliant campaigns this year. The Youth Cabinet have been busier than ever and are incredibly excited for all the content we’re putting out.

We hope you’ll support our work and come along with us through it all, here’s a short summary of what you can expect!

Mental Health

The main focus for the Mental Health campaign are the upcoming webinars (so keep an eye out for those!). At the moment the name is still being decided between ‘Helping with Mental Health’ and ‘Mental Health, Are You Aware?’ with the slogan of ‘Save Mental Health’ .
We’re working on booking external speakers, possibly people who own a support animal; work as a councillor; someone from pastoral support at a school etc. And ideally the topics covered would be about where to get help; coping mechanisms; why to seek help and talking about common mental health issues.
We’ll also have some talented young people from the Youth Cabinet themselves talking about mental health issues as well as potentially sharing their own experiences.
Structure of the webinars is still being discussed in order to have the most captivating, time-efficient result – we’re confident everyone who watched will be able to take away at least one thing that they’ve learnt.

Environment

Unfortunately the beach clean ups have had to be pushed back, but there’s still a lot we can do to help the environment remotely.
We’re planning on doing three climate change workshops all with guest speakers and Q&A’s.
1) ‘How can we protect the coast?’ will include topics of how climate change is affecting the coast- erosion, the increasing issue of overfishing, the damage of plastic pollution, marine animals and habitats and lastly rising sea levels.
2) ‘Where do our products come from?’. This will include learning about fast fashion and how to shop more sustainably to reduce waste, deforestation and palm oil, the benefits of being either vegan or vegetarian and/or how to reduce your red meat intake and biodegradables.
3) Lastly, ‘How to reduce your carbon footprint?’ which will discuss the benefits of using public transport and reducing overall travel, buying local produce and the reduction of food waste, single use plastic ramifications and recycling.
Currently, we’re writing the PowerPoints and finding speakers and after these, we’re planning a social media campaign with videos including meatless recipes, upcycling ideas and summer challenges.

Political Engagement

This campaign is a fairly new one and we’ve already split up into three main segments: social media, podcasts and webinars.
The social media campaign is all about promoting political engagement particularly amongst young people by having short, informative, interesting posts on current political topics.
This includes a weekly factual post, a weekly controversial debate topic (with an accompanying poll story to actively engage our viewers) AND a weekly summary of the week’s political events on this blog, which is starting this week! The posts will be starting next week (11th January), so make sure to like and share those!
We have also launched the very first Youth Cabinet podcast! Hosted, ran and made by our Political Engagement Campaign members. Weekly debates on a wide range of topical issues; we discuss issues like whether of statues of slave owners are racist, mandatory vaccination, single-sex schools and so many other topics that effect young people not only in West Sussex but the whole of the UK too. They’re short, engaging and we’re sure you’ll love them.

And the best part? The first two podcasts are already up! Get listening:

Spotify Playlist

YouTube Playlist

SoundCloud Playlist

Finally we’re also hosting webinars on understanding politics; our political system and promoting discourse.

Free University

With this campaign we’ve got our eye on the prize and are focused on the end goal.
One of our biggest goals is educating and convincing others to support the idea of free universities and teach them the different ways this could be achieved.
We also want to launch a social media campaign, posters and polls as well as near the end when hopefully more people have become convinced, a petition. As well as a YouTube ad to grab people’s attentions.
To target the financial argument we will be talking about how ending the cycle of poverty will dramatically better the country in the long term. Better education means better pay meaning more people able to contribute more taxes to the government.
We would also be willing to compromise on a reduced university fee.

Domestic Violence

Last but most certainly not least, is our domestic violence campaign.
This campaign is the birthchild of one of our own Members of Youth Parliament, who worked tirelessly to research and collate the motion to be put forward into the Make Your Mark ballot of 2020. After all the votes were collected nationally, his campaign motion won! We aim to raise awareness about Domestic Violence and how it can affect young people in particular. With members having first hand experience, they hope to improve certain aspects of how Domestic Violence is treated and approached in a way in which young people believe is more beneficial than what has happened in the past.
We aim to create and run Webinar(s) in which we will have accounts and speeches from people who have experienced Domestic Violence (only if they feel comfortable to do so), in these Webinars we aim to highlight how young people feel the approach towards dealing with Domestic Violence, especially in a school environment, can be improved. Emphasising the importance of dealing with domestic violence, using statistics collected from professionals to further our viewpoint.

We really hope you’re looking forward to all of the upcoming social media posts, webinars, podcasts and more, we truly have spent so much time and effort putting these campaigns together and your support means the world.

All that’s left to do now, is get listening, liking and sharing!

Written by Anah Zakeer
Youth Cabinet Member for Crawley and Communication Officer

Find out more about the West Sussex Youth Cabinet