We have been very busy this Autumn term at PYA. Here is an overview of everything we have done since September:
September 2021:
After finishing our report on the Cwrt Y Vil MUGA survey we started looking at what our next campaign will focus on. To do this, we looked at the 300 tops and pants we collected the year 7 students during Stanwell Day. On the tops and pants, the young people write their favourite and least favourite thing about where they live. Here are some of the things they wrote:
Tops:
- I like living by the beach
- We have really good shops
- The people are really friendly
- We have lots of green space
- I feel safe in my community
Pants:
- There is too much litter
- Some of the parks are run down
- There isn’t enough parking
- There are homeless people who need help
- Lots of anti-social behaviour
We ranked the most common topics from the pants and decided our next campaign will focus on homelessness in Penarth. This will be explored more in our future task groups.
October 2021:
In October, PYA members did 3 assemblies to recruit new members. We did one in St Cyres for their DofE students, and two in Stanwell for year 9 and year 10. Three PYA members worked with the Youth Action worker to write a script of what they wanted to talk about during the assemblies. They decided to focus on why PYA has been a good opportunity for them and how it has helped improve their confidence.
PYA members have also been making sure that all the old PYA posters in their schools have been taken down and replaced with new ones so people interested in joining us know who to contact.
November 2021:
We did another assembly in November for the Stanwell students in year 8. Our next goal is to do more assemblies in St Cyres and recruit some more St Cyres members.
We also got our new uniform with our updated contact information on it.
A big piece of work we did in November was the Annual Development Plan consultation. This is an opportunity for young people to share their views and ideas for their local community with the Vale of Glamorgan Council. Everyone had some great ideas in our discussions. Some of the topics we talked about included:
- How can we improve active travel?
- How can the Council hear more about what young people think?
- Where should money be spent to improve your local area?
A PYA member also helped run the Annual Development Plan Consultation in Llandough Out Loud Youth Club.
December 2021:
In December we celebrated some PYA members achieving their next volunteer milestone! Two PYA members have no reached 200 volunteering hours! PYA members have contributed almost 70 hours of volunteer time in the Autumn term and lots of PYA members are getting close to reaching their next volunteering milestone!
We also discussed in our last PYA meeting that we want to work in partnership with the Youth Cabinet Homelessness Task Group in January.
Summary:
This has been a busy term with our recruitment push, planning for our next campaign and all the consultation work we have done. Two new member have joined us as a result of our assemblies which is great. We are looking forward to making a start on our homelessness campaign and working with Youth Cabinet.
If you are interested in joining PYA, get in touch with us at pya@valeofglamorgan.gov.uk!
