Campaign triumph for city’s Youth Council

A campaign by the Brighton & Hove Youth Council to encourage participation in a national youth survey has been a massive success. 

Young people aged 11-18 across the city were given a chance to make their views known in a national ‘Make Your Mark’ campaign earlier this year organised by the British Youth Council.

Representatives of the city's Youth Council told the council’s children, young people and skills committee that the number of young people from Brighton & Hove who responded was up this year by nearly 500% – from less than 400 last year to more than 1,800 this year.

Health and wellbeing was the most important issue for young people in Brighton and Hove. After that the three next most important issues were education and learning; jobs, money, homes, and opportunities; and the environment. 

The city’s Youth Council invited all schools to take part and made a short promotional video to send to them.

They organised a QR code with a direct link to the voting page, and set up a Brighton and Hove Youth Council Instagram page to publicise the campaign.

Nine secondary schools took part in the campaign this year. This included assemblies, promotion in form time and tutor groups.

Youth Council chair Alfie Douglas said: “I would say thank you to everyone on the Youth Council for all the work they’ve done. Since health and wellbeing was voted in this year's make your mark, I know that so much as already been achieved. It was so great to be heard by all the councillors on the committee.”

Committee chair Councillor Hannah Allbrooke said: “I’m immensely proud of our Youth Councillors and I’d like to thank them for all the hard work they put into this. I would also congratulate all the more than 1,800 young people who joined in the survey.

“As a result of this survey, our Youth Council will be campaigning on transport. We support the aims of their  campaign to improve transport for young people and look forward to working with them and transport providers to achieve this.

“We will also continue to push the government to increase our funding so that we can deliver the services that our young people deserve.” 

• Youth council members Georgia Stringer and Deneb Marden-Rull also represented Brighton & Hove at the recent UK Youth Parliament debate at the House of Commons. More than 250 young people from across the UK took part.