Positive for the future

Oldham Youth Council

TODAY, November 12, is the official Takeover Day run by the Children’s Commission charity 11 Million. All over the country, young people are getting involved in local businesses.

At the Oldham Chronicle, members of the Oldham Youth Council were involved in making decisions on the the news and how we report it.

They also produced their own reports report on the Youth Council’s news and views in a bid to show young people in what they see as a more realistic and positive light.
Oldham Youth Council strives to raise awareness of the fact that a lot of the news we hear about young people is negative; quite often only the bad things young people do are reported, and a lot of the good stuff goes unnoticed.

However, over the past few months, Oldham Youth Council has been recognised for the hard work they’ve been doing. Being On the Youth Council is very rewarding in its self – it has so many opportunities, gets to make a positive change in the town and has a lot of fun along the way.

But it’s still nice to receive recognition in the shape of award nominations and award winning!

In October, we attended the Trust Oldham People Awards, and the Youth Council were nominated for the working together for Oldham awards.

Also, Becca Dale and the Every Life Matters campaign received the award for Community Service.

It was a fantastic night and great for us to see the hard work that the employees throughout the council are doing everyday, receiving little thanks.

But it doesn’t end there — oh no — we have also had the great honour of being nominated and making it to the finals for some very prestigious national awards.

Later this month, we will be attending the Children and Young People Now Awards, which will be hosted in London.

The Youth Council and Oldham’s Local safeguarding children’s board have been nominated for two awards; the Stay Safe Award, for the work on devising the Charter of Young People’s Digital Rights, and also the Anti-Bullying Award.

We are all so excited to have even been nominated for such awards but to win, well that would be something else

None of the achievements we’ve had this year would be possible without the support of our Youth Work team, who work tirelessly to help us improve the lives of each young person living in Oldham.