As some may have seen in last week’s BBJ, Sam has been joined on the team by Andrea Downes and Caroline Topping. I would like to welcome both Andrea and Caroline to the team and look forward to the forthcoming year!

The main priorities for us this year are youth engagement and youth provision. Firstly, we had a really good response over the last two years on youth engagement events like the Hotseat event and we will continue to promote citizenship and democracy to young people in the town. This is important now more than ever as we live in ‘interesting’ political times where the voice of youth has to be heard in what is going on at local and national level.

One thing we are looking to do to support this work on democracy is to coordinate some sort of project for this year’s Local Democracy week. The hope is that informing young people will engage them in what is happening in Beccles both presently and in the future. The second priority is youth provision. There are lots of great things going on in the town for young people and we try to promote them as best we can in this column, and we will continue to promote what’s going on as best we can. This is particularly important with summer round the corner and we have a few ideas on how to achieve this – watch this space!

Also on youth provision (as mentioned in last week’s BBJ), a long term ambition is to try and get some sort of youth club in the north of the town. This is to provide a youth club space for young people to go in Beccles North in an accessible location. This project is in its very early days but we will be working on this as well. As always, we are open to looking at ideas to make the town better for youth so if you do have any ideas or comments, please let us know!

Sam Kenward, Andrea Downes and Caroline Topping

Youth Champions 2017/18