Wiltshire Times HeadlineOriginally uploaded by gallomanor It’s not often that young people get positive media coverage, and it is even rarer for Skate Boys to be seen in a positive light. That’s why this needs to be shared. Original Story.
The I’m a Councillor evaluation report for 2008 is now ready. Topline results for this year are that councils were busier than ever before. The average number of questions asked per council is 331, by an average 203 users. Compare that with 111 questions asked, by 126 users in the average council in 2004 and you can see the huge growth there’s been.
This is partly due to great work by councils and teachers. Thanks! But another reason, we think, is that schools now have much better ICT facilities. And teachers and students are more computer literate. So it gets easier and easier to engage schools using a project like this.
One Saturday in January I jumped on an early morning train from Bath to London to go to a BarCamp. My expectations weren’t enormously high. I’d heard they were very geeky, get your laptop out and code type affairs and Read more…
"Above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to. It belongs to you. It belongs to you." Barack Obama acknowledges why he won the election. He gave his campaign to his supporters and they gave him his Read more…
Young people deserve a voice. The minority group we call youth includes the “hoodie” who nicked my mobile telephone, the 18 year-old winger your football team just signed, and the sixth former who will, some day around 2040, be elected Prime Minister. It’s unsurprising, then, that young people are eager participators in politics. All they need is a voice!
Our flagship youth engagement event, I’m a Councillor, Get me out of Here!, has finished for the sixth year. The event – featuring local councillors and young people from 22 counties across England, Wales and NI – put school pupils and youth group members in contact with local politicians live and online. Young people also met volunteers from abroad: a former MP from Taiwan, a political activist from Zimbabwe, a city politician from the Netherlands…
But, enough sales pitch. The best thing about I’m a Councillor isn’t the event: it’s the young people, who logged in, read manifestos, asked questions, completed quizzes, attended live chats, and so on. For our final report, we’ll focus on the young people that are I’m a Councillor‘s heart and soul.
What gets young people going? What did they ask about? How did their local councillors respond? Quotes, and a final report on the event, in this extended entry.
Chloe joined us last year to be our admin support for I’m a Councillor. At the end of the contract she left us to work for The Bible Society. One day, as happens occasionally, the conversation in the office turned Read more…
I’ve seen poverty, but never experienced it. Living in Bombay (as it was called back in 1985) the drive from the airport to downtown involved passing by shanty-towns and beggars with limbless babies pressing themselves against the window of the Read more…
I went to see some dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum yesterday. I was there because TalkWiki had gathered speakers such as Tom Reynolds, who blogs at Random Acts of Reality and others. One of the others, Peter Kawalek, from Read more…
Cllr Hefin David and Gareth Lewis, a student from Caerphilly were interviewed on BBC Radio Wales this morning. Starts at 24 minutes into the broadcast.
You probably think I’ve got a screw loose to be here, given the bad news you constantly receive about southern Afghanistan. But I think I’ve got the best job in DFID. I hope I can explain why – all the Read more…