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Children and Young People's Forum

Children and Young People's Forum

The Children and Young People's Forum (CYPF) met for the first time in October 2006, after a recruitment process led by the NI Youth Forum. Young people came from youth clubs and organisations from both the voluntary and statutory sectors and were aged from 7-25.

The aim of the Forum was that young people would influence decisions in all aspects of The Big Deal in terms of both policy and practice, as well as forming the decision making panels for the Small Grants Programme. 

These are the stories of some of the young people who have taken part in the Northern Ireland Children and Young People’s Forum.

They were provided with a number of questions as prompts and these stories came from the answers they gave. The aim of this exercise was to enable the participants and beneficiaries of the programme to say how they had benefited from participation in the programme.

There are a number of common themes going through the stories

  • Surprise that others - particularly adults and Government agencies - wanted to get their opinions and were willing to listen to them.
  • The sense of satisfaction and self worth that came from being trusted to make decisions on the allocation of small grants
  • Meeting and getting to know new young people from different parts of Northern Ireland and from different religious and cultural backgrounds
  • Being listened to by their peers and learning to listen to them
  • Gaining the confidence to express their opinions in a group situation.
  • The importance to young people of the informality of the leaders and being treated as equals
  • The new information they got especially about the possibility of groups in their own area applying for small grants.
  • The fun they had:this has been such an important element in the whole programme. Without it, it is questionable whether many of them would have stayed with it or indeed joined in the first place. Fun is important for its own sake. At the same time shared fun is probably the most effective way of promoting new relationships and friendships and making all the other elements in the programme interesting.

 

CYPF Celebration Event - March 2010

The Big Deal CYPF Celebration Event brought together young people who had taken part in the Forum from across Northern Ireland. As well as the chance to meet and share their experiences, it was an opportunity to showcase the achievements of the programme. Presentations were given by members of the Forum and Ruth Ellis (CYPF member) compered the whole event very competently. The Director of the Big Lottery Fund for NI, Walter Rader, opened the event and at the end of the presentations facilitated a participative reflective exercise. The Director also talked to each Forum member individually about their work and advised them on future funding activities. Walter said that he thoroughly enjoyed the event and he found it very invigorating.

You can see photos from the day below.   An independent evaluation of the work of the Forum was carried out in 2010. 

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