Youth Assembly Campaign Takes a Leap Forward!

Monday 17 December 07

After weeks of preparation and hard work, WIMPS and NICCY staged an event at Stormont to mark Universal Children's Day on 20th November. The event highlighted key issues facing young people in Northern Ireland, and 108 young people met two Government Ministers to campaign for the establishment of a Youth Assembly for Northern Ireland.

The event was inspired by the work of WIMPS activist, Christopher Madden from Carrickfergus. Regular visitors will know that he has been campaigning for the establishment of a Youth Council in his home town. Not content with that, he then began campaigning for a Youth Assembly, and was joined in his efforts by a number of other young people, including Public Achievement board member, Ellen Diver.

Young people from all over Northern Ireland came to the event from schools and youth organisations. The day began with a workshopusing mobile messaging technology to gather the views of young people on a range of issues. The 108 young people then walked up the drive of Stormont where they met the two Junior Ministers, Ian Paisley Junior and Gerry Kelly. Chris and Ellen made a presentation as you can see in this film. They were accompanied by Children's Commissioner, Patricia Lewsley, who spent the entire day with the young people, participating in the workshop and the walk to Stormont.

The event was also supported by Big Deal with a grant that was agreed by their youth panel to support Chris in this campaign. Support was also given (in the form of goodie-bags for the 108) from Biznet IIS, Coca-Cola, Domino's Pizza, the Belfast Metropolitan College and the Health Promotion Agency.

Now the real work begins! The Ministers have promised to meet again with young people to talk through their ideas for a Youth Assembly, and a broad range of MLAs from across all the parties have pledged their support for the campaign. So watch this space, and please give us your ideas through the forum, and register for updates.