St Albans Youth Council

Two websites that we found interesting!!

http://whosbored.org/

http://www.time-to-change.org.uk/

On Saturday the 18^th of June, many of our SAYC members braved the torrential rain at the St Albans Arts Festival at Verulamium Park. We ran several activities at our stall. Particularly successful were our Hoopla and Fishing Ducks games.  These proved to be a huge success with many children and a substantial amount of adults too! We also sold bright and stylish T shirts, kindly donated by Garden Fields Primary school.

As well as our exciting fairground games, we also conducted surveys in our Mi Pod, a blow up igloo designed so that we can interview people confidentially. These surveys were conducted as part of our Mental Health Project. Our aim today was to research young people’s attitudes to, and awareness of counseling support in the local area and within their schools.  This research will help to inform our project and when completed will be complied into data that will be sent to local schools and the District Council. For many of us, this has been our first experience of interviewing people in this spontaneous situation and it was a great opportunity to improve our confidence and social awareness.

All in all, the day was a huge success; the games were highly popular and we raised in excess of £150 for Youth Talk, a charity enabling young people to speak to someone about their problems. Not only was the day a fundraising accomplishment, but an example of effective teamwork, dedication and of course, powering through the pouring rain and carrying on!

Hi, I'm Joe and I'm lucky enough to be elected as Treasurer of SAYC. I've been involved in lots of SAYC projects, including summer sounds 2009 and 2010, promoting via hot chocolate at the chirstmas light turn-on and I'm looking foward to all of our exciting projects coming up in 2011.

Hello there!

We've decided to start a series of regular blogs to keep you updated about what we're up to, and I'm kicking things off, being our resident techie and all that :p

We had a meeting yesterday, the 3rd of May, at Fleetville Community Centre, a new venue for us as we were unable to use our usual spot at the District Council because of the elections.

We had a few new faces around the table, which is always nice We were joined by Beth, Sophie and Shaahida. Look out for their blogs coming soon!

So what did we actually discuss? Well you can read the full minutes here, but briefly:

Our mental health project

• We discussed which schools and year groups we'd like to test out our questionnaire on
• We decided to trial with year 8's and year 10's, so if you're in those years we'll be hearing from you soon!

Website Update

• I gave a brief update about our lovely new website
• We discussed the idea of these blogs and thought it would be a good way for us to communicate with you and keep you updated with everything we do
• We discussed the possibility of adding a discussion board to this site, which may be coming in the future. If you think one would be a good idea then let us know in the comments below

School Newsletters

• We chatted about our advert that we're hoping to get into school newsletters as soon as possible, so keep an eye out for that as well

That's pretty much it from this meeting, apart from all the cookies and doughnuts we ate. Thanks to the Fleetville Community Centre for letting us use their building for the meeting.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to telling you more! Make sure you add our facebook page (link's on the right) to keep up to date with all the latest for young people in St Albans

On the 21st of November SAYC ran a stall at the Christmas lights festival in St.Albans town centre. We sold hot chocolates (with toppings), glow sticks, glow necklaces and bracelets, all to raise money for youth talk (a free and confidential counselling service for all young people in Hertfordshire). We also gave out some information leaflets about SAYC, and asked some youths to complete some questionnaires for us. We made a gross profit of £373, leaving us with a net profit of £123. This was brilliant for youth talk, especially as we decided to give them our gross profit using some of our own money), and we all had a really fun time at the festival too!

Hi, I’m Ellie from Sandringham school (year 10). I joined SAYC in October 2010, and have loved everything that I have done so far (e.g. selling hot chocolate at St.Albans Christmas lights festival was great fun and raised loads of money for youth talk). I really look forward to every thing thats coming up for the youth council in the new year!

Hi, I'm Hugh. I've been a member of SAYC since March 2010 and was elected Chairman in September. So far I've been involved in the Summer Sounds music gig, talking to councillors about young people's issues, raising money for a local charity Youth Talk at the Christmas lights switch-on and researching issues surrounding young people's mental health in St Albans.

Hi, my name's Beth and I go to STAGS. I am in Year 12 and have been going to Youth Council since November 2010. I have really enjoyed the things I have taken part in so far, for example the Christmas Lights in town selling hot chocolate. I can't wait to take part in future events.

Hi, I'm James and I'm SAYC's Technical Officer. I do the administration for this website. I go to St Albans School and I'm in Year 13. I have been a member of SAYC since September 2006.