If you haven’t already heard, Your Voice, Your Vote is the local version of an annual consultation run in previous years called Make Your Mark. The local Youth Action group lead on the promotion and use of the results from the annual consultation, by helping to inform local priorities and the top issues from the vote for our young people. Results are shared both locally and regionally to inform campaigns by linking up with our regional youth voice steering group, the national charity Young Advisors and the British Youth Council.
The results are in… 10 secondary schools voted, 1 primary school as a pilot year, 5 further education colleges/sixth forms and 1 local charity organisation got involved in the vote producing a staggering 4247 votes from our young people.
The top voted issue was ‘More things to do and places to go’ [891 votes, 21%], closely followed by ‘Feeling safe on our streets’ [679 votes, 16%], and ‘Reduce knife and violent crime [567 votes, 13%]. Our top priority issue gained quite a large proportion of votes meaning there has been a shift in priority and importance of these issues in our local area. This is apparent as for the first time in three years ‘Mental health’ was not in the top 3 which is an achievement for our local area and young people; instead it came in 4th with 521 votes.
We are already beginning to make change with our new priority ‘More things to do and places to go’. Our local Youth Action group has already had their first meeting back after Christmas where we started discussions on the outcome of the vote. In relation to our new priority, national charity OnSide is in the early stages of building a Horizon Youth Zone; a safe, inclusive and vibrant space providing over 20 fun and engaging activity to thousands of our young people, with the building commencing in a matter of months.
For more information about the youth voice groups involved in this work or the results in this report please contact Molly at molly.ward@nelincs.gov.uk or visit www.nelincs.gov.uk/yourvoice.
Find out more about the Home Page – Horizon Youth Zone.
See our Your Voice, Your Vote 2022 results in our infographic:
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