The Surrey Heath Youth Council are continuing their manifesto commitments by starting a new project to tackle discrimination. At first, we are aiming to focus on discrimination brought about by a lack of awareness and are looking at disabilities and age. We hope to challenge discrimination around disabilities by raising awareness and educating other young people, while in our age project we hope to challenge underrepresentation of young people by getting them more involved with local decision makers such as their borough councillors.
The Surrey Heath Youth Council has always strived for every young person’s voice to be heard but it is undeniable that within our local communities there are young people who still can’t express their opinion or are not understood by their peers. This needs to change. Our project focuses on what can’t always be seen and aims to allow those with a disability to speak out and change the negative thoughts of others. By increasing awareness and creating an environment where young people want to understand more about their peers, we hope that young people won’t feel like they have to keep anything to themselves and can be proud of who they are.
Undoubtedly, we have so many brilliant youth activists and campaigners in our country, along with a plethora of youth voice groups such as the Surrey Heath Youth Council. However, sometimes it feels like we are only seeing a small piece of the puzzle and, depending on the figures you use, less than 8% of our youth population actually make an effort to express their views to the aforementioned youth voice groups. To us, that is far from acceptable and we cannot sit by and allow millions of young people to go unheard. That’s why our second project is all about connecting young people to the local decision makers and groups to allow them to feel comfortable in engaging their thoughts and ideas with the community.