Aim
of the activity:
To
examine the people who are our elected representatives at different levels in
our democracy.
What
you will need:
Flip
chart sheets and marker pens.
Paper and pens.
Camera
Preparation
beforehand:
Make
arrangements with one of the members of the Youth Parliament for your area to
come along to visit the group. (If no MYP is available try to get someone from
a Youth Council, or a local town councilor.) Arrange the time they will arrive
to be about half-way through your session. You can contact the Youth Parliament
secretariat c/o DfES, Moorfoot, Sheffield. Tel: 0114 259 4779 and they should
be able to put you in touch with your local MYPs.
Suggest that this would be a good opportunity for the MYP to hear the ideas of the young people in your group and find out what issues the Youth Parliament (Youth Council/Town Council etc) is currently dealing with so that you can help the MYP to feed these into the discussion.
What
to do:
Get
the group to brainstorm who represents them/their family/their locality at various
levels. Hopefully these will include:
and you will probably come up with others.
Ask the group what they think the job of a ‘representative’ is. List their ideas.
Tell the group about the visitor who is expected shortly. Get the group to choose someone to chair the meeting. Then, working in pairs, ask them to think of questions to ask the visitor or things they would like to discuss. Write each on a separate piece of paper and hand them to the chairperson to sort into a sensible order and remove any duplication.
Take a break for refreshments around the time you have arranged for your visitor to arrive. When they arrive, offer refreshments and then get your chairperson to assemble the meeting and … away you go!
At the end, take a photograph of the group with the visitor and send it in to your local newspaper with a short report – preferably written by one of the Pioneers.