Archive for the ‘Debate’ Category
Religion being taught in schools
Posted on: July 5, 2013
- In: Debate | Education | School
- 2 Comments
There’s one class in school that I know from experience and talking to others that is usually thought incorrectly and inaccurately. Religion. Usually a filler class for most that takes up two classes out of the 49 I have a week – I tend to have to sit in religion and have to listen to a bias opinion on one religion and I know from others that I’m not the only one to experience it.
Since the Celtic Tiger, Ireland’s religious spectrum expanded and even though the vast majority of the country fall under the title of Roman Catholic there is plenty of other citizens with different views on religion and their spirituality. But why is it that even though the country has changed, the system has not changed? Why is it that Ireland’s education system for religious education has not evolved with the population and the students in school?
I’ll tell you why, because Ireland has it’s head in the clouds and does not take religion as a serious subject. 1,500 students sat religious education for their Leaving Certificate this June and I only know one of them. Until a few months back I was even unaware of the fact that religion was a subject for leaving certificate. I was aware of it being studied for the Junior Cert, but not the leaving cert.
So if people aren’t studying for the exam that is available, what are they studying for? Nothing. The classes are used by a teacher that is probably not qualified in religion but only has a strong view on the topic (which is usually bias to one religion). For example, a teacher who is extremely catholic could voice their opinion on same sex marriage, adoption laws and abortion in a negative way but not allow for an open opinion from the opposite side of the argument.
I believe that religion should remain a subject in schools – but not as what it is. I, as an agnostic, would very much so like to learn about different religions, philosophy and different outlooks on life from a teacher who is unbiased to their own religion. They say a traveled mind is a broadened mind, but how can someone have a broad mind when their mind has only seen Catholicism?
– Paraic McLean
- In: Debate | Youth Poll
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Doom & Glum
By Tanya W.
It is scary how young people view the world today. They see there parents struggling to pay bills more and more families are living in consistent poverty. Young people are really feeling the pinch of the recession.
If your between 16-18 your more than likely looking at leaving Ireland to go in search of college or work. Leaving behind your whole life friends family and community yet not wanting to but seeing this as the only option you have.
Speaking to friends and hearing them going on about the siblings going half way around the world in search on jobs. With many of them doing it as most of their friends have gone and is less and less to keep them here the government are hitting them from every angle. Services are being cut social has been drop to ridiculous rates and people just can’t afford to live an average life here.
Young people who are in secondary school have the fear of asking their parents to go on the school trip’s. I even know of someone who got in trouble with the school for not going on a trip as it was compulsory, yet when brought to parents attention they didn’t know about it and the child explained he hadn’t told them as he knew they couldn’t afford for him to go so he didn’t ask. im sure this is happening all across the country. Which is frightening.
According to statistics I come across for last year we had the highest rate emigration in the european union. With 9 in 1,000 people leaving the country. which im sure has gone up as this year has been worse than last and we’ve get to get the new budget. can we really afford to lose this many young people.
Yet with further cuts in youth services and college being more expenses and harder for people to go it’s not surprising. I don’t think the government are doing enough to stop us from loosing all of our young people. when the are spending money on having pointless referendums to see if they can cut judges pay. why wouldn’t you everyone else has had to take cuts so why not them??
i just afraid of what the country will be like in 5 years if the country keeps going the way its going as I don’t think we will have many young people and we will also have lost well-educated and trained young people.
- In: Campaigning | Debate
- 1 Comment
By Tanya W.
Yet again the government like to swap and change there mind about what age you’re an adult. At 16 you can pay taxes, work and pay adult fairs when in comes to public services, all the down sides yet not getting any of the perks and being told you should act like an adult.
Then at 18 you continue doing all that stuff but now you get some of the perks like being able to buy drink and fags, go night clubs, vote but you get more bills and pressured to decided what to do with your life because know you’re an adult yet at same time treated like a child.
At 21 now you’re eventually old enough for people to actually treat and speak to you like an adult and you can now become a politician so you can run to become a member of the Dail and even maybe Taoiseach. The person with the most power in the country. Yet again the government decided you are not old enough to do other jobs i.e. run for president which for some mad reason you can’t run for until you’re over 35. Why 35?? I’ve no idea it doesn’t make sense to me.
So if I get this right you can run the country at 21 as that’s the age you have to be a politician so you can become a member of Dail and become the Taoiseach. Not that I saying it likely to happen at the age of 21 but it could happen by the age of 30 let’s say. So you can be aged anywhere from 21 and run the country having complete control over it. Yet you can’t become the face of the country which is a lot of the president’s job. I’m not saying they are not important or don’t have other jobs but in a way that’s what they are.
In the next coming month we have to vote for are next president we have a choice of 7 candidates made up of 5 males 2 females all over the age of 50. All I’m sure have there strengths and weakness. Any of the seven will do a good job I’m sure I’m just really
confused. Constantly it is being said the youth are the future they will get us out of this. We need to look to the youth. Yet we won’t allow the youth to run to be president that just seems very contradictory to me.
I would safely say there are people out there under the age of 35 who make excellent presidents but they don’t have the choice because it’s wrote in a document that is really old and out of date. I think its time that it was updated and the age lowered. If there’s a valid reason why it’s that age I will listen but I don’t think there is a leg to stand on trying to keep the age requirement at 35.
WHY IS IT THE YOUTH ARE THE ONLY ONES BEING BLAMED FOR INVOLVEMENT IN THE RIOTS IN ENGLAND??
Posted on: August 10, 2011
By Tanya W.
Sat watching the news and listening to the radio most the day. I am so sick and tired of hearing teenagers and young people are the only ones being blamed for all the riots going on in England. What is going on in England is not a surprise it is outrageous and I don’t agree with. People are lashing out at the government and what the government has done to the country.
I think it is very unfair that all the blame Is being put on young people yet from CCTV footage it is very easy to see many people who are in their late 20’s or older. Yet only young people are being blame with all the reports saying ‘100s of YOUTHs are rioting, loitering and setting the fire’s’.
The situation is very bad in England with more cities having riots started every few hours as im writing this the
riots are in areas of London, Birmingham, Bristol, Kent, Liverpool and Leeds. I would say unfortunately this is most probably going to get worse.
People are loitering shops/ businesses and setting them aflame. Also houses are being robbed and owners are being terrorised. Many people have lost their homes, businesses and for some unfortunately both.
One person interviewed on sky news tried saying that maybe the young people are doing this to fight back at all the services that have been stopped for young people so they have nothing. Yet they barely give him 2seconds of a interview. Yet someone stating that its all young people who are from housing estates are to blame has more air time. So its only young people
from lower class communities that are to blame for looting and causing fires. This is a complete stereo-typing.
There’s talks of putting curfews in place for under 20’s this is outrageous because they are blaming every single youth in these areas which are affected. They would not even think about doing this for people in their 30’s-40’s. Yet I’m sure there is plenty of people in that age range that are involved in the attacks.
I’m not saying that young people are not involved I’m just saying you can’t blame it ALL on young people, there are people of all age
ranges, from different backgrounds, communities that are involved in these attacks. Yet if you listen to the news they would want you to believe that its only unemployed young people from housing estates that are to blame.
Ageism
Posted on: June 2, 2011
- In: Campaigning | Debate
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By Tanya W.
Travelling to and around Dublin I have seen many signs for the campaign “say no to ageism” yet from my knowledge and from what I have found out that’s only applies to people over 18. So the law around ageism is ageist.
I understand in some cases why this is the case as in for common sense and the protecting on young people when it comes to things like working after a certain time at night as they are still in school. Or a 9yr not being allowed a driving licence because of his age these things protect the young person but should there be a general right for young people not to be discriminated against because of there age.
There are 9 areas to which people are not allowed to discriminate under
- gender;
- civil status;
- family status;
- age;
- disability;
- race;
- sexual orientation;
- religious belief
- Membership of the Traveller Community.
Young people have rights under 8 of those but not when is comes to age discrimination.
I believe that young people have the right to be protected against be discriminated
against due to there age unfortunately this is not the case. In schools this is a big problem most the times on the way young people are spoken to, yet in some cases it is much more severe in the news this week it has been spoke about the case of there being toilets in student bathrooms in a school and when the students went and complained they were not listened to and were just dismissed. Yet when the parents (over 18’s) went and complain something was done about it. This is not fair and should not have been the case.
Another way young people are discriminated against is when it comes to services between the ages of about 12-18. When it comes to dental care there are no dentists that deal with young people between the ages of 12-16 and to get treatment care during this age you have to fight. When it comes to mental health services between roughly 16-18 there is no specific service as child services work up to 16 and adult work from 18. So if your 17 and need mental health services you normally get picked up by the adult service but that is not the right service for you.
Then you have the public transport side of things where you can be charged adult prices at the age of 12 sometimes when you are clearly not over 18 an adult. They wouldn’t charge a 5year old an adult fair. Shops often have security guards follow young people around shops just because of there age they would dare do it to a 30year old. Yet because everyone knows that young people and little or no rights they can get away with it.
Young people are discriminated against a lot almost daily because of there age. While I
think they should not be discriminating against older people on the grounds of age I don’t think they should be discriminating against young people either.
Public Transport
Posted on: December 29, 2010
By Tanya W.
The transport system in our country is rubbish I think we most have one of the worse systems. Unfortunately I have to rely on this system to get to meetings or events.
It is so annoying because the government has made it so expensive to run a car which I also do tax is crazy price and insurance is unreal and that’s without taking
into account buying the car the petrol which is a crazy price and just seems to be getting worse. And now they want to make it even harder to get a licence.
Like I believe instead of putting money into putting an improved driving system in
place that they should put money into improving our transport system as this is more environmental friendly. The argument that is being put forward is that these new measures will ensure we have safer drivers on the road ok that’s grand but what about the drivers already on the road I think it will make as much of a difference as they hope as the older drivers have bad habits which were once accepted.
The problem is if you live in a county like mine where public transport is none existent and getting within the county itself is impossible unless you have a car which isn’t that many of either 1 in 7 households in my county don’t have access to a car. I believe this figure is so high due to how expensive it is to run a car and the constant increase in changes being made to getting a licence.
If you don’t live in a city you have to be able to drive or have a friend drive you around or you are just not able to go anywhere. This was shown when one of my committees meet in the town of Roscommon and majority of the people on the committee had never been in the town before yet they were all from Roscommon County. This is mad and it the young people that suffer the most but also the old are really effected by the lack of public transport.
Yet if you live near a big city you also have problems with public transport but he
problems are different in that if you live near a city you have to go into the city to go anywhere even though it would be quicker just to go to that place this I seen myself the other day when I was visiting a friend in Kildare and I had to take train to Dublin go through Kildare to then get another train back from Dublin to Kildare. It crazy that this seems to make sense to someone. It waste so much time I had been told about this from friends but I hadn’t experience this till the other day and now I understand there frustration.
I think the government need to really improve the public transport systems in Ireland as they are really out of date and not convenient at all. Instead of pumping billions into a sinking ship which was the banks they should have been pumping it into something that is actually needed and will last.
PISA Report
Posted on: December 13, 2010
- In: Debate | Education
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by Tanya W.
The other day i was asked to go on the radio to chat about the current findings of the OECD (the Organisation for Economic Co-operation Development) PISA survey (Programme of International Student assessment) on students.For those of you who haven’t heard the findings it stats how are reading skills have dropped from 5th place in 200o to 17th place. This is the biggest drop of the participating countries. Also maths has dropped form 16th to 26th which is the second biggest drop in participating countries. On the science front we have pretty much gone unchanged.
Now you have people arguing that it is due to teaching standards, parents, migrants and even technology. No one wants to take the blame and I don’t think anyone group are responsible. I think they all have contributing factors. The one thing that everyone seems to be agreeing on is that it puts a big black mark on Irish students and completely demolishes the point that the Irish education system is world class.
The one thing that I haven’t heard anyone mention is the government’s spending on education or should I say the lack of it. We are ranked 30th out of 33 countries when it comes to educational spending. This I believe has a hugh impact on the study others believe that a certain amount of the fall could be down to the fact that over the last few years we have had a significant number of foreign nationals come into the country. As English would not be there first language.
Some people are blaming it on technology and i believe this has a small amount to do with it as there is more distractions and not as many people read fro pleasure. Yet then you can look at how technology has helped make it easier for students to study and up skill with games on the Nintendo ds for improving your English or grammar. Then there is eBooks which you can download on to a number of different pieces of technology I myself have used for reading or as the girl I was on the radio with she used eBooks to help her prepare for her junior cert. Then there are podcasts for iPods of notes for different subjects.
One thing that is also true in my opinion is teaching standards have dropped in the last few years I believe that teachers just don’t seem to have the dedication towards teaching anymore. The easiest way this is seen is that when you’re in primary school they look at for the people who are having a bit of trouble and get the appropriate help for you but when you’re in secondary schools they don’t notice if you have any problems or if your falling behind as they are just worried with covering the material that is needed for the exams. This i had said to me more than once while i was in school. I think that this leads back to the governments funding that if there was more funding in place there would be a better level of teaching standards.
There is talk that the standards have fallen in Ireland due to parents not having as much interest in there children’s education. I don’t believe this is true if you just look at the number of students that are taking grinds this is obviously showing that parents do have an interest as they are paying for their children to have this extra help.
The one thing that has been said is how the government are going to fix this problem as they have been relying on the fact that we have world class education so we should have a smart economy that is going to pull us out of this situation we are in. So how are we going to get out of this mess if we are not as smart as they had once thought. It will be interesting we they now realise what damage they have been doing by not investing in education. I don’t anyone thing is to blame but i believe the biggest problem is the lack of funding in the education system as it is true taht we need a smart economy to get us out of this mess.
Eating Disorders-Anorexia
Posted on: December 2, 2010
- In: Debate | Education | Mental Health
- 2 Comments
by Tanya. W
As I have mentioned I have returned to third level education. I’ve been working on
assignments and the topic I was working on was eating disorders with special emphasis on anorexia. So I’ve been research and reading piece after piece on the effects signs symptoms and what it actually is.
Well I suppose for those of u with the miss conception that people normally have I will explain what anorexia actually is the full name is Anorexia nervosa and it literally means ‘loss of appetite for nervous reasons’. The term anorexia nervosa was established in 1873 by Sir William Gull, one of Queen Victoria‘s personal physicians. The term is of Greek origin: a (α, prefix of negation), n (ν, link between two vowels) and orexis (ορεξις, appetite), thus meaning a lack of desire to eat.
Anorexia nervosa is a severe, life-threatening disorder in which the individual refuses to maintain a minimally normal body weight, is intensely afraid of gaining weight, and exhibits a significant distortion in the perception of the shape or size of his body, as well as dissatisfaction with his body shape and size.
People with anorexia often hide their condition, so the warning signs are not always easy to spot. Furthermore, anorexics will typically try to explain away their disordered eating behaviours when confronted. But as anorexia progresses, the signs and symptoms become increasingly obvious and difficult to deny.
What sets someone on a course toward self-starvation? It’s easy to blame a culture that equates slenderness with beauty and success and portrays stick-thin women as the physical ideal, but eating disorders have been around for centuries.
While the physical and emotional consequences of anorexia can be devastating, the good news is that it’s a treatable condition. With the right treatment team, people with anorexia can and do get better. They can regain their health, learn to eat normally again, and develop healthier attitudes about food and their bodies.
Since anorexia involves both mind and body, both attitudes and behaviours, a team approach is often best. Those who may be involved in anorexia treatment include medical doctors, mental health professionals, and dieticians. The participation and support of family members also makes a big difference in anorexia treatment success.
Eating disorders are becoming more common with 200,000 people in Ireland are affected with eating disorders. With over 10% of people diagnosed in Ireland under the age of 10. It is becoming a huge problem in Ireland and there are a great number of people dying from it each year. The average annual mortality associated with anorexia are more than 12 times higher than the annual death rate due to all causes for females 15-24 years old, and more than 200 times higher than the suicide rate of females in the general population.
This is not just a girls condition man are affected by it as well. “[Eating disorders] have been seen largely as an issue affecting women, and because of that, I think men have been far less likely to identify themselves as affected by it or to seek out treatment — much in the same way as men with breast cancer tend to show up in breast cancer clinics much, much later,” says the study’s author, D. Blake Woodside, MD.
Men need the same treatment as women but don’t take up treatment as they don’t believe that men can have anorexia as it seen as a female disease and also it is said that if males have it they are normally homosexual which is a really bad misconception.
So while I was research about anorexia I came across a really frightening thing that if you search anorexia one of the top searches is anorexia tips and there are about 2,070,000 results which only take (0.08 seconds) to find. This is extremely worrying as you can get all this information online on how to be anorexic properly and the best ways of doing it.
This is crazy as there are only 1,530,000 results which take (0.52 seconds) to findhelp for anorexia online. So for one there is the time difference there is between the time it takes for the search and then there’s like half a million in the difference of results found. This is completely outrageous as even the national organisation for eating disorders don’t give adequate help online yet you can get all the information you want on how to become anorexic and how to do it discretely so you don’t get caught. This I believe is completely unacceptable as I know someone who is battling anorexia at the moment and I have seen how it is consuming her whole life and how it is affecting her and her family.
I don’t think that these pages should be allowed I know there’s the whole freedom of speech and information act but when it comes to giving people information on how to kill yourself surely that isn’t right and shouldn’t be allowed to happen. As telling someone how to become anorexic you are helping them kill them self this is illegal in Ireland. So surely the government should be able to do something to stop them being able to add information or have information in the first place about this.
There isn’t enough awareness around eating disorders especial around anorexia and the statistics speak for themselves with the number of people dying from anorexia is higher than the number of deaths from suicide. This is completely unacceptable and and more awareness needs to be made around eating disorders and people should be educated on the signs and symptoms of anorexia nervosa as the soon it is caught the better. Unfortunately the last person who realises they are hurting themselves is the anorexic themselves even if they are on their death bed they will deny they have a problem.
It is a cruel and horrible illness that needs more awareness not more information on how to encourage the illness.
Underage Contraceptive and Sex
Posted on: November 12, 2010
- In: Debate | Education
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By Tanya W.
The other day I was at home sick watching day time TV when they started having a heated discussion on the headlines in the paper which were about girls aged 13 being given the contraceptive pill and how everyone was outraged by this. It was based in England but it got me thinking about sex education and the legal age for consent and the age you’re allowed to be given the pill in Ireland.
I was actually quite shocked that when I looked into this that there is no minimum age as such in Ireland I wasn’t shocked because of the lack of a minimum age more at that normally Ireland are stricter when in comes to sex. What I did find out was that what actually happens is that if this issue arises they actually look at English law as we do not a have a precedent in this area this could be down to the fact we live in such a religious country and contraception is only started to be talked about freely but is still frown upon by the church.
Irish GPs who prescribe the pill to under age teenagers do so in the belief that the Gillick principle would be a reasonable defence in an Irish court if they were legally challenged for their actions. The Gillick case was concerned with the issue of prescribing contraceptives to under age teenagers and the name was derived from Mrs Gillick, the parent that pursued the case right through to an appeal hearing in the House of Lords in England.
I also read a piece wrote by a friend of mine who is a journalised and she stated how we have the highest age of consent in Ireland being 17 with other countries have the age of consent at 13, 14 , 15 or more reasonable 16 like it is in England. The thing is that teenagers do have sex younger than 17 and that being the age is not realistic. She had also wrote about how a young guy had been sentenced to 11 months in prison for have consented sex with his girl friend because she was only 16. Even though the courts found that the young couple actually taught the age of consent was 16 like it is in England. And this brings me to my point that not enough sex education is being given to teenagers.
Now last year the Dail na nog council looked at this and found that schools aren’t teaching or if they are it aren’t being taught correctly. Me myself when I was in school I never once received any sort of sex education during my schooling but thankfully enough I have a very realistic down to earth mum who was always open about chatting on the topic of sex. Unfortunately not every parent is like that. And if schools aren’t giving this education how are people going to find out about the risks of infections and protecting themselves.
I think there are a lot of adults that try and burry there heads in the ground and would like to think that people don’t become sexual active until there 17+. But that aren’t true and I think that if a 13 is going to have sex isn’t it better if they ask a doctor for advice and about using contraception. So then they can make an informed decision instead of a decision based on hear say and myths.
- In: Campaigning | Debate
- 1 Comment
by Jason P.
It was a long journey to Avon Tyrrell but we arrived a day early to try and get use to the place. We spent our first night in a cabin where we decided to go for a stroll around the Forrest to take in the scenery but it was starting to get dark at the time so we didn’t get much time to take everything in so we went back to the cabin and relaxed had a bit of food and got to know each other a lot better.
The next morning because other people were still arriving to Avon Tyrrell we got a chance to go to Bournemouth and spend a few hours there while the rest of the young people got registered. We decided to go get something to eat first then after the food we decided to split up to take in the sights we went to a few shops at first and split up into smaller groups myself Tanya, Alice and Isaac choose to stick together and go to the beach to take in the sights before we had to go back which was great fun relaxing on the beach and taking in the sights. Afterwards we went back to Avon Tyrrell for the ground rules and domestics.
After the ground rules and domestics were over and done with we went and done some ice breakers so everyone could mingle and get to know each other. Myself and Jen went to the tennis court first to play a very bad game of tennis haha. But then more people came with a basketball and then we had a game of basketball on our hands. It was quite physical and there was a few slips and injuries including my self but put all that aside we made some new friends and had a fun time. After all the fun was over we all went back up to our rooms to get some sleep for the next day. We woke at about 7am so we could get dressed and get breakfast.
After the food we were spited up into groups corresponding with the colour of our wrist bands. So Myself and Isaac stayed together and our first workshop was about lobbying where we could work on our debating skills so they handed us out sheets of paper with a different fruit on each page. And our objective was to debate why our fruit was better than the other fruits. We split up into smaller groups of three so Isaac, Jay (a member of a different youth club in England) and myself were part of one group we had to discuss which fruit was better between a pomegranate, a kiwi and tomato. I don’t know how but the tomato won. It was a great way for us to learn more about debating and discussing and voicing our opinion.
We had a short brake then went to our next workshop which was based on social media (mainly facebook) where we learned about how long it took all the different ways of commutating to receive 50million viewers for example radio took over 35 years to get 50milliom viewers where as facebook took 9 months to get over 100million users. That came as a shock to all of us and we debated about how addictive facebook really is the average user loges on to facebook over 120 times a day!!!. Facebook has become that addictive they have created a facebook anonymous for people trying to recover from there addiction to facebook. But after that they went through things that we already knew like report cyber bullying never add anyone who is not a friend. When that finished we had another short brake before starting our last activity. Our last activity was called ITV Fixers. They thought us how to approach an interview with the press and to respond and not to respond after they covered the basics with us they put it into play with a scenario they had laid out for us.
The scenario was based on a group of teenagers who were sick of been pushed to the side and not having anywhere to go so they decided to open there own youth lead youth club. The cast was the young people who wanted to express why they wanted to go ahead with the youth club. The reverent who is all for the idea of setting up the youth club in his church but the churchgoers are against this idea and he is not to be seen to take sides. The angry residents who don’t want the youth club to go ahead because they have a fear if the youth club goes ahead it will result in more underage drinking and anarchy. And last of all the local police who are all for the idea of the young people having somewhere to go but have a doubt in the back of there mind that they will start fights and have underage drinking party’s. Isaac played one of the young people who wanted the youth club and I played one of the local police. Me and another girl went up as the police to do an interview. They gave us a quick run through before they started the interview. When it started I was nervous at first but once I got talking that all went away all in all I think it went really great and I really enjoyed it.
After we had finished with the ITV Fixers we went for lunch before we went to do our activities. The activities were archery, low ropes, high ropes, raft building and cannoning. Myself and john went to do the archery which we had a really fun time doing. We decided to talk in Irish which we know very little of so we jus said random words to each other. That’s when we heard the funniest thing ever a member of UK Youth Voices asked us what language we were speaking when we told them it was Irish there first reaction was “ Irish is its own language??? We thought it was just an accent”. After that laugh myself and John made a load of new friends as well starting a competition where we had to shoot an apple with the bow and arrows. None of us could hit it so they said who ever hits the bull’s eye or the apple will win. There was two left on each team so me and John went against each other me and my partner Aishling won as both of us managed to hit the bull’s eye. John was not to impressed ha ha John.
After all the activates were over and done with we went back to where we were staying and started to mingle with everyone again while we waited for the pool party to start. We stuck together as a group and bonded closer to each other as well as making some new friends along the way. Once the pool party started everyone’s inner child came out including Ruth and Michelle we also had a band playing the singer was not that great but the music was still good. Soon after that was finished we had a disco in the main hall where I made a new friend with a youth worker from England her name was Tara and we shared a lot of similar interests in young people. After the party was over we went back to our rooms where me, Tanya , John, Neill, Isaac and Alice stayed up for a while chatting to each other about how the day went.
When Sunday came along there wasn’t a whole lot left to do but we were all brought outside to learn more about human rights and one last ice breaker go get to know each other that bit more. After that we went back inside for the debate. For the debate the choose the three main topic that were chosen by the young people which were relationship and sex, should the voting age be lowered to 16 and well I apologise I cant remember the last topic. But what I do remember we didn’t spend much time on the sex and relationship topic but the voting age topic was full of conversation for example a good point Tanya made was that no matter if u lower the voting age young people don’t know enough about politics to cast there vote and chances are only a hand full of young people will vote as well. But it was interesting to hear how the young people of England felt how they were being miss treated by there government.
When we finished the discussion we had an open mic ceremony where people could freely come up and give there opinion on how the weekend went for them and how it made them feel. There was a few tears because some of the young people were deeply touched by how passionate all of us were about defending each other and giving young people who cant get there voices heard to give them a chance to be heard.
When they finished up with that they held there voting where members could become a part of UK Youth Voices. As we were from Ireland and couldn’t become members we decided to plan to talk to the current members of UK Youth Voices after the voting was done to tell them about Voices of Youth and what we do and to learn more about UK Youth Voices Tanya took charge to let them know about Voices of Youth where she handed it over to Alice to tell them about our campaign against the mosquito device and showed them our blog and all the other campaigns we started. And we learned a lot about UK Youth Voice where we found out that they have the same problem with the media as we do like if we do something good for the youths the media won’t pay much attention to it and pay more attention to the bad things teens do.
After all that we said our good bye’s to all the friends that we made and the following day it was just us all on our own so myself Tanya and Alice went for one last walk around the Forrest to take in the scenery and enjoy the beautiful landscape before we left to go home. All in all the weekend away to Avon Tyrrell was defiantly worth it and me personality I would love to go back. We brought back a lot of memories and new skills and as a group our selves we grew a lot closer to each other and bonded close to we learned a lot and became more of a family than just a group.
Voicesofyouth 