Youth Assembly

The Rivermont Youth Assembly was set up in 2019 with a deliberately narrow remit: it would meet six times a year, it would elect two representatives to the district’s education committee, and those representatives would have a vote.

The narrowness was the point. A youth forum with a broad remit and no vote is a listening exercise. A youth assembly with a small remit and a real vote is a training ground.

What it has changed

• The school transport review of 2021, which the assembly forced back to committee twice before the routes were redrawn.
• Study rooms in all sixteen district libraries, staffed until seven — an assembly proposal, costed by an assembly member.
• The move of the district’s careers fair from a Wednesday afternoon to a Saturday, after the assembly pointed out that the people it was for were in lessons.

How it works

Each participating school elects two members for a one-year term. The assembly elects its own chair and its two committee representatives. Meetings are held in public and minuted like any other committee.

A vote you can lose is worth more than a hearing you cannot.

The one rule the assembly set for itself is that it does not take a position without a paper behind it. In five years it has tabled thirty-one papers and withdrawn four. The withdrawals are published too.

Next

The commitment for this term is a second voting seat, on the planning committee, where the decisions with the longest shadow get made and the people who will live with them longest are least represented.