THE NATIONAL YOUTH AGENCY: Neighbourhood management - hearing youngvoices in action

Every year a national conference is held by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister on neighbourhood management, aiming to improve neighbourhoods that are falling behind the rest. In December they wanted to make sure the voice of young people was heard throughout the event. They invited down to Stratford upon Avon a team of six young people to be "roving reporters", to collect information on what was going on and report back. It gave us a platform and showed that our opinions really are important and taken seriously. Becky Sharp, one of The NYA's Active Involvement Team trainers, helped to coordinate the work and link with the ODPM before and during the event. The roving reporter team hit it off from the start, meeting and exchanging ideas the night before the conference. The young people and adults worked well together, making decisions effectively and working as a team to produce the final results. These included an overnight newsletter, a web page reporting on the conference, and a PowerPoint compilation of delegates' responses to the question: "What are the first three words that come into your head when we say 'young people'?" We ended with a presentation to the whole conference on our experiences in involving young people.