Beeston and Holbeck councillor Angela Gabriel met with a group of eight young people from the Youth Service South Leeds Youth Engagement Group at St Matthew’s Community Centre.
The group are made up of local young people who attend Holbeck Youth Club, Beeston Village Youth Club, ASHA Girls Group and South Leeds Hub.
The young people are apart of the Youth Services Youth Engagement programme, which aims to help young people to have a voice in their community.
We train local youngsters up to play an active part in their community, where they speak to key people in their locality with power and influence to raise youth issues and then feedback to their peers.
Our aim is to support young people, especially in areas where there are youth issues – where communities are looking for answers to local issues where young people can be apart of the solution to problems.
This is just a start and the young people are still finding their feet, but they are growing in confidence as everyone they have met so far has been very supportive and helpful towards them.
So far the group have met with the Satbinder Soor, Senior Area Youth Officer for the South East South Youth Service, and Shaid Mahmood, Team Leader for South East Area Management Area Leadership Team. They have also been approached to send a rep to the Holbeck Neighbourhood Planning Enquiry.
The young people wanted to meet with Cllr Gabriel in her capacity as the chair of the Inner South Leeds Young Peoples Working Group. They asked her a wide range questions like – ‘what does her job as a councillor entail’ – ‘does she talk to young people’ and ‘how does she approach issues that are affecting young people’ – the issues they raised with her where about dog fouling, joy riding, youth unemployment and lack of housing for young people.
The young people found the councillors responses honest and forthright and welcomed her approach.
The councillor ended the meeting with her own question, about they wanted to do for a career in the future – we had two youth workers, one physiotherapist, one airport worker, a sportsman and one wants to work in tourism and a couple of not sure – the councillor wished them well in their chosen career and indicated she would like to meet them again. The young people thanked her for meeting with them.
– report by St Clair Brown,
Youth Work Manager
(covering Beeston & Holbeck and City & Hunslet)
