At a meeting at Department for international Development with Nick Clegg and Andrew Mitchell and 30 young people ahead of the Millenium Development Goals review summit in New York next week. Over 100 young people applied and Jamie Lloyd, a young person from Cumbernauld YMCA in Scotland, was one of those chosen to attend. Jamie has been involved in “Youth Actually”, a group of young people from across Scotland who are learning peer education techniques to help raise awareness of development issues in their local YMCAs.
He is a committed Cumbernauld YMCA-YWCA Youth Committee member who has recently completed two 10k runs and a 15k cycle for Youth Committee Funds.
The young people came to :
* present the work of young people campaigning in the UK on the MDGs (including presenting a collection of these called “Our Voices”)
* highlight key messages from young people to the UK government on what they feel is important within development
* ask questions on three key areas – global partnership; building support for development; and effectiveness.
Before the meeting the group met at Restless Development’s offices to finalise the content of these presentations and to formulate the questions, it inevitably takes time to craft a good question that is representative of such a diverse group.
Jamie contributed to the question on global partnership, which meant the YMCA movement, amongst others, got a mention as an organization that is a model of good practice for youth participation!
In terms of outcomes, Andrew Mitchell has committed to having future meetings with young people and the Youth Workers Group on the topics of a) participation of young people in development and b) building support for development. It will be for the Y Care International representative at the YWG to see how we can be involved in these meetings.