14 – 19 Commission

RYWU is working together with West Middlesbrough Neighbourhood Trust and Stockton Borough Council on the Youth Advisory Board (YAB). A project that has been devised by the North East 14 – 19 Commission in order to gain the opinions and concerns of the young people from the North East about the current education reforms.

Neil Burke and Laura Wright have been employed as youth coordinators to assemble a group of young people to be the Youth Advisory Board to the commission.

The YAB accomplished many achievements over 2008 with 3 main outcomes from their hard work. The first was the establishment of a virtual portal which has been developed in order to present young people from the region with a young person friendly site that they can use to gain access to good information that is relevant to them.

The second outcome was that the YAB undertook a training course in order for them to become leaders of the future. The training course which was delivered was “The Young Advisors Programme” and the group all passed successfully!

The final outcome which brought much success was to deliver a conference to adults based upon their findings from their work with young people. The conference was titled “Information, Advice and Guidance from a young person’s view” which was held at the Gateshead College Baltic site. The conference was staged by the YAB who coordinated the full day’s proceedings. Many plaudits followed on from the conference which was described as a great success.

The hard work of the YAB was rewarded as the project has been extended and the development of the board continues. The board are now currently developing future projects and are looking to involve as many young people as possible that would like to participate in the on going work!