The UpRising leadership programme has welcomed the backing by the Speaker’s Conference of youth and community citizenship engagement programmes.
The Speaker’s Conference is a committee of MPs that has been investigating how Parliament can be made more representative. In their final report today (11 January 2010) the Conference highlighted the importance of youth and citizenship programmes that directly focus on developing active citizens.
The Speaker’s Conference pointed out though that many of these organisations were small-scale and called on the Government to ensure ‘greater and more consistent access to youth and community citizenship engagement programmes’.
Omar Salem, who leads the UpRising leadership programme at the Young Foundation, said:
“We welcome the recognition from the Speaker’s Conference of the importance of youth and community engagement programmes to strengthening Parliament and making it more representative. We hope the government, along with business and the third sector, will now take up the challenge of increasing access to these programmes.”
A number of members of the Speaker’s Conference took part in an event in March 2009 to get advice from participants of the UpRising leadership programme. The UpRisers, who are young adults aged 19-25 years old, discussed with MPs Anne Begg, Ann Cryer, Fiona Mactaggart and Jo Swinson what could be done to make Parliament more representative and engage more young people in politics.
Omar Salem and Louise Pulford who work on the UpRising leadership programme, also gave evidence in Parliament in March 2009 to the Speaker’s Conference. They called for more efforts to develop young people’s leadership potential and to link them to opportunities to get involved in politics.
Read More »
