Write a commentThis week the Newry & Mourne Youth Council had their Annual Elections for office bearer roles within the council structure and they elected 8 Youth Councillors.
The Newry & Mourne Youth Council are a group of young people who act as a representative voice of young people from the Newry & Mourne area. We develop social action programmes based on issues identified by young people as important to them. The group are supported by the Education Authority Southern Region and based at the Youth Resource Centre, Carnbane in Newry. We also run the Youth & Future Talent Awards (YAFTAs) which were created by the Newry & Mourne Youth Council to help raise the positive profiles of the work young people are involved in across our district. We aim to highlight the “unsung heroes” who don’t normally receive recognition.
The Youth Councillors are all mostly new to the Youth Council this year as many members progressed on to University and Employment, so we held our elections a little later than normal so that everyone could get to know each other better. This enabled the Youth Councillors to be able to make the best choices for each individual role and cast their vote on who they though best fitted each role.
We had a number of Youth Councillors stand for each individual office bearer role were they told us why they wanted to run and what they could bring to that role. It was a tough decision but the votes were cast and the elected Youth Councillors happily accepted their new position within the Youth Council. The new office bearers will meet at a later date to discuss their plans for the Youth Council and what they envision for its future. They will also partake in a two night residential next week in Shannagh-more Outdoor Education Centre in Newcastle with other newly elected office bearers of other Youth Councils to receive training on their new roles and create strong links with the other Youth Councils.
These are the Youth Councillors who were elected for office bearer roles:
Chairperson Conor McLoughlin
Vice Chairperson Amber Wilson
Secretaries Mark Kinnin & Jason Annett
Treasurers Scott Monteith & Louise McGeeney
Public Relations Officers Ronan Burke & Rowan Lewis
The group are now look at plans for the upcoming year, social action programmes around issues affecting young people, different charity events to help raise funds for local charities and also the YAFTA’s in early 2016.
