Active Youth Wokingham

Manga Art Course @ Wokingham Library!

Andrew E — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:01:49 +0000

Red Garden Artist Group Drawing Course

At Wokingham Library!

Do you enjoy drawing manga art? - How good are you?
We are offering an 8 week progressive workshop in conjunction with Red Garden Artist Group, which will take you on a journey from Manga drawing basics to creating storyboards.

Starts Saturday January 28, for 8 consecutive weeks until Saturday March 17 at Wokingham Library from 10.30am to 11.30am.

£3.50 per session or book the whole 8 weeks for £25.

Limited places available so booking essential – Call (0118) 978 1368.

Wokingham Borough Libraries is now on Facebook!

Like us at http://www.facebook.com/wokinghamboroughlibraries

New Year – NEW LOOK!

Andrew E — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:59:53 +0000

The start of a new year and Active Youth has had a facelift!

This was a chance for us to look at the site and make sure it was as user friendly and easy to use as possible. Let us know what you think of the new layout – things will continue to change as the bulk of the content is updated so please excuse us - this shouldn’t take to long!

Candidates announced for this year’s youth parliament elections!

Speaking up for Woodley!

Andrew E — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:26:45 +0000

Come and tell us what you think about living in Woodley. Could things be better? If so, how? Do you feel safe? If not, what would help? On Wednesday 1st February from 4pm – 6pm we are inviting young people from school year 6 to the age of 19 to come and talk about growing up in Woodley. We want to work together to give young people more places to go, more things to do and to feel safer. We are looking for young people that would like to be actively involved in shaping their neighbourhood. After the meeting, you will be invited to come and work alongside a team of professional people that all come into contact with the young people of Woodley and who want to know your ideas and help turn them into real projects and plans.

So, what are you waiting for? Come and join us on 1st February, 4pm to 6pm at Woodley Airfield Centre in Hurricane Way. If you have any questions about this event then please contact Paul Blount on 07710 862409 or paul.blount@wokingham.gov.uk

New MYP and DMYP Elected!

Sharon H — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 20:59:59 +0000

Sumaiya Karim, 15, was elected as MYP and Charlotte Pugsley, 16, was elected as DMYP. More info soon……

Who Will You Vote For?

Andrew E — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 09:18:31 +0000

The 2011 Memmbers of Youth Parliment candidates are in!

Head over to “Get Involved”, then click on “Members of Youth Parliment “and finally “Who Will You Vote For” – for all the candidates photos and manifestos.

Read through and choose your favourite for voting day!

Actors, dancers, singers, camera / sound person needed

Mariewoolston — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:45:34 +0000

We are looking for actors, dancers, singers or people who are interested in camera / sound work for a film that Wokingham Youth Centre is making.

The film is a production by young people who have been working on a life skills project.

You do not need to have much experience but you do need to be committed to the project.

Age range is 14-16 years male or female. Interest must be shown before the 14th November 2011.

If you are interested and would like further information then please contact Marie Woolston at marie.woolston@wokingham.gov.uk.

Youth Opportunities Fund!

Andrew E — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 11:56:30 +0000

Youth Opportunities Fund

Have an idea on how to improve things for young people to do?

Need some funding?

Well we can help!

YOF grant is open to groups of young people between the ages of 13-19 (up to 25 for those with learning or physical disabilities) who would like funding for a project that benefits young people.

We have a total of £10,000 to give out, less money than in the past, so competition for a share of the funds is expected to be strong.

In the past we have funded projects such as youth shelters, skills building classes, arts and drama workshops, cultural events, bike workshops, music projects, young parents’ project and many more!

Any and all ideas are welcome; we want to fund as many projects as possible.

Click on “Get Involved” and then YOF Oppertunities Fund!!

Update from your Member of Youth Parliament

Amy — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 22:10:53 +0000

I’m Amy Longland, and what have I been up to since being elected as Member of Youth Parliament? Well, I’ve been doing lots of things to tell you about – so much I haven’t yet had a chance to write my first blog! Sorry guys…

Since starting my role as Youth MP I have atended many meetings such as the Children’s Trust Board, Community Safety Conference and the Neighbourhood Partnership committee within the borough to gather experience and relevant knowledge about youth services that are produced in the borough – not to mention representing young people and giving them a voice on things that affect them.

I have also attended youth forums such as Youth 10 and the Youth Opportunity Fund which gave me the opportunity to hear the views of young people. Being able to attend the Youth Opportunity Fund meetings allowed me the opportunity to give other young people the chance and financial aid to fulfill their ambitions.

Campaign-wise, I am working on promoting and improving communication and accessibility of youth services; I have created a facebook page for the youth mp and am working on making the activeyouth.co.uk website more well known amongst young people. I am working on redesigning and ordering more activeyouth posters and leaflets to make them more appealing to young people.

I have attended many MYP campaign workshops to help mak my campaigns more effective, and I have currently released questionnaires at schools and youth clubs across the borough regarding youth safety, concerns and issues in order to fully establish about what I need to do about he safety aim of my campaign. I have also been communicating closely with the owner of the Academy of self defence to investigate fund raising opportunites which will allow me to set up self defence workshops at schools and youth clubs in the near future!

Watch this space!

You can contact me via YouthMP@wokingham.gov.uk or via 07714226731. You can also contact me via Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/update_security_info.php?wizard=1#!/pages/Youth-MP-for-Wokingham-Borough/143604329047775

Update from Deputy MYP – Jay Newton

Jay — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:39:33 +0000

Hello young people of Wokingham! It’s Jay here your Deputy Member of Youth Parliament writing a very delayed update that I believe I had promised for April (oops), well for starters I’m going to try and get one of these posts out once a month at least. My future updates won’t focus solely on what I’ve been doing but will also include some updates on the youth parliament organisation as a whole and things which have been going on in the south east involving youth parliament, I’m also going to pick a topic for debate each update and open that topic up for replies and thoughts on the issue so that I can get a better idea of your views and how best to represent you nationally and locally.

Moving on, just this weekend past 22nd-24th July I attended the UKYP (United Kingdom Youth Parliament) annual sitting in place of Amy Longland (MYP) who sadly couldn’t make it, I only found out that I would be needing to attend at the last minute so I was less than prepared for the three day event which was held on the campus of Leeds University (who provided great accommodation and free green tea).

I missed most of Fridays action which included talks from John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, and Iby Knell a Holocaust survivor. Bercow apparently stated that he believed our generation could be the best yet and Iby Knell stressed the importance of living in a free society. When I finally did arrive I attended a workshop on politics and the spoken word, spoken word being the name for performance poetry, the workshop taught me some valuable public speaking skills based on finding your core motivation that I hope to employ in future.

The Saturday began with a manifesto workshop as UKYP chose to use the annual sitting to update the UKYP manifesto, for those not quite certain of the word manifesto or its relation to UKYP it’s basically a collection of statements which we believe should be law or ideas to change the country (for example “We believe in free education for all children because x,y,z”) I joined the group that was making changes to the employment section of the manifesto which worked via each member of the group deciding upon a statement that they believed should be in the manifesto and we then discussed all the statements until we only had two left which would be submitted for voting to the entire gathering on Sunday morning.

I decided to push for the inclusion of fair paternity leave, that is allowing fathers the same amount of time of work as the mother when a child is born, happily I managed to convince the other members of the group to agree with me (A few people were stalwart against for some reason). This then lead to me having to write a speech to convince the entire gathering, more on that later.

The rest of Saturday involved various speakers the first of which was Tim Loughton MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Children & Families
(Tory) who spoke very positively about the future of youth involvement, though I pressed him to justify the 20-30% cuts most areas are placing upon youth services and his response was somewhat shaky and involving ASDA paying for it which I think most of us saw through.

I then attended a panel with Maggie Atkinson, the Children’s Commissioner for England who spoke about the importance of more focus on teaching relationships and not just biological sex education, Richard Wall Development Officer, Young Advisers charity though I didn’t really understand what he was talking about (I was at the back and it seemed to be a circular argument) and finally Kevin Austerberry, Royal College of Nursing who was largely ignored during questioning despite his well presented fears of future NHS cuts however I caught him after the end of the panel and we talked about the nature of different health services in Europe and he explained to me that we could face waiting times for services such as GP’s and A&E double in the next four years.

On the final day I presented my case for the adoption of fair paternity leave to the manifesto which after an excellent speech from myself was voted in successfully, other motions that were voted in should soon be listed here http://www.ukyouthparliament.org.uk/282464/index.html.

To end my update I would like to briefly pause upon two issues I encountered, firstly Euthanasia which was voted in to the UKYP manifesto without any counter argument much to my shock and fury, I would be most grateful if anyone who feels strongly either in favour or against Euthanasia could send me an email as to why. The second is that of relationship education within sex education, I would like to hear from anyone whether you were taught purely the biological aspects of sex or if you also spent PHSE lessons learning about how you know when its “right” etc, or just general comments about sex education in general.

To get in touch with myself, or Amy, the MYP – please contact us via youthmp@wokingham.gov.uk or 07714226731

Thanks,

Jay Newton DMYP Wokingham Borough

Big Splash!

Louise — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:06:25 +0000

We spent the day at Dinton Pastures Multi Activity Centre doing watersports and climbing and team challeneges.

We were a group from Twyford Youth Centre and there were young people there from Finchampstead as well.

Between us we got better at watersports, worked as a team and got better team work skills whilst having lots of fun – and we got trophys at the end of the day…