We aim to be the voice of young people in South Ayrshire. We want to hear your views on everything that affects you, so that we can tell decision makers exactly what young people in

South Ayrshire want!!! Read on to find out more about what we do, and how you can get involved…

South Ayrshire Youth Forum is Supported by South Ayrshire Councils

Community Learning and Development Team

Community

Partnership Project!!

parliamentarians. As each project develops, information that will be available to the public. More info will be available on SAYF’s website www.sayf-syp.webs.com

The Scottish Parliament opens its doors to South Ayrshire Youth Forum! SAYF will take part in a 12 month ‘Community Partner-ship Project’ (March 2010 – March 2011) with the Scottish Par-liament. SAYF will get to visit Holyrood and learn about MSPs and voting, committees, how to get involved, petitions and how laws are made. They

will then tell other young people about what they have learned. SAYF will choose what issues they would like to see addressed and will work with Parliament staff and MSPs to de-cide how to bring this issue to the Scottish Parliament. This could be a public petition, an event, an art pro-ject – any method that SAYF believe can effectively communi-cate their issue to

Issue 5

Spring 2010

Local MSYP’s Brian Borland and Jodie McCoy, with guest Darren Kennedy,

attended a sitting in Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, of the Scottish Youth

Parliament on 6th, 7th and 8th of March. The main topic of the weekend’s

discussion was ‘Young People and Money’ and there were lots of

discussion and debate about particular money issues within young people.

Topics discussed on Saturday included problems with recession, being able

to access quality services, equals rights and pay and financial worries for

students at College and University. There was various different

organisations doing workshops with all MSYP’s discussing certain money

issues and these workshops included: The Poverty Alliance, Young Scot,

Cashback for Communities, Youth bank Scotland, Quarriers and Citizens

Advice Scotland. And finally on Sunday, member’s motions were heard

and debated. These included fourth year prelim study leave and banning

mosquito devices etc and they all had good and reasonable feedback from

the mass of MSYP’s. All in all, the weekend was a massive success and our

very own Brian Borland won MSYP of the year, so a very massive well

done to him.

John Snoddy a member of the youth forum is been busy in the LGBT/Age/Gender group at Ayr College. Here is a short report. The LGBT/Age/Gender have been currently working on surveys about LGBT, Ayr and Gender to let the students of Ayr College have their say on how well they think the college is run and how it can also be improved. Johns task in this was to hold an Age consultation with the Higher Education students and with members of the OIR (Opportunities In Retirement). He has held the consultation with the Higher Education Students, this was a great success and the results are being written up. In Johns Session with the Higher Education group John told students what the LGBT/Age/Gender group was and what it hopes to achieve then asked students to fill in some

sheets as honestly as they could. Anyone that would like more information on the LGBT/Age/Gender group should contact Donald Stewart d.stewart@ayrcoll.ac.uk

COMMUNITY PLANNING PARTNERSHIP UPDATE

LGBT/Age/Gender UPDATE

The Partnership has had a busy past few months with plenty of things to discuss in the past couple of meetings. The CPP has also had the pleasure of meeting the Chief Executive of Young Scot, Louise MacDonald. Recently, the Forum has been working to organise its “Fast Chat” event in which members will meet partners from the various theme groups and will gain some valuable understanding of the work of both the Community Planning Partnership and its five Theme Groups. Finally, the CPP has chosen the representative of the Youth Forum to be a member of its Community Engagement who will work with the other community representatives to work on how to engage effectively with members of the public. For More information about the Community Planning Partnership please contact Laura McCulloch at Laura.McCulloch@ea.sayr.sch.uk or 01292 616421

Would you like to be a part of South Ayrshire Youth Forum, or would like any information about the

Scottish Youth Parliament…YES then contact us:

South Ayrshire Youth Forum 9 Green Street Lane

Ayr 01292 266171

Brian.Borland@south-ayrshire.gov.uk

Did you know that there are other ways to look at the work of the SAYF?

www.twitter.com/SAYouthForum

www.bebo.com/SouthAyrshireYF

Type “South Ayrshire Youth Forum” in the Search Box

www.sayf-syp.webs.com