HOW much do you know about the City of Greater Bendigo youth council?<\/p>\n
Seventeen young people between the ages of 15 and 24 years old make up the current youth council, which youth mayor Cr Jack Smith said is a professional and personal development opportunity for the region\u2019s young people.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we do is work with other community groups and with council to make sure that young people have the opportunities that they need to thrive in Greater Bendigo and around Victoria,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the ways that we do that the most is from a strategic and policy end. We give a lot of feedback on a lot of council strategies from the perspective of young people, strategies like the Health and Wellbeing strategy\u2026 lots of internal council documents that young people never get to see and they\u2019re never consulted on.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom another perspective we also work on our own projects which is really exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Past projects included a series of online Q&A events during last year\u2019s COVID-19 lockdowns with young leaders like Eppalock Ward Cr Matthew Evans and Victorian multicultural youth commissioner and former Bendigo youth mayor, Khayshie Tilak Ramesh.<\/p>\n
At the beginning of their two-year term, current youth councillors formed working groups, each led by a chairperson, on the issues most important to them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 17 of us decided on what our four top priorities were going to be for this year and those are education and employment, wellbeing, youth representation and advocacy and environmental sustainability,\u201d Cr Smith said.<\/p>\n
Young members of the public also join these working groups in an effort to promote community consultation and input.<\/p>\n
Meeting in the council chambers fortnightly, Cr Smith said the youth council follows a similar process to that of their seniors.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a briefing where we get community members and stakeholders to come present to us about either ideas or ways they want to work with us, or if they want to consult with us on how they\u2019re doing their work and how that works with young people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo weeks after that we have a meeting where we go and vote on all of those things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Currently, Cr Smith said the youth council are in the planning stages for community projects around mental health and LGBTQIA+ young people.<\/p>\n
A regional and rural youth forum is also in development, aimed at bringing together emerging leaders from across the state next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to run a forum in Bendigo hopefully at the start of next year, it\u2019s never been done before, where we get youth councils and youth advocacy groups from all around Victoria so we can advocate to State Government, which is something young people in these roles have never had the opportunity to do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n