What do we believe?
Youth services and agencies support young people's personal
development, give them a meaningful role in society and provide
positive ways for young people to spend their time. We campaign for
all young people's services to be well funded and for existing
youth services to have funding priority over new initiatives. We
believe young people need youth services now more than ever.
BYC is
part of Choose Youth, an unprecedented
coalition of young people, volunteers, youth organisations,
professional youth workers, and community representatives who are
working to save youth services. We believe our youth service is too
valuable for young people to lose.
Your Stories
We want to hear your stories about how youth services are being
cut in your local area, why your youth services are important to
you, and the difference they have made to your life. We would like
to hear the experiences of both young people and youth workers.
Please email an outline of how you are experiencing youth
service cuts and how this is affecting you to campaigns@byc.org.uk.
We will share your experiences with decision-makers such as MPs
and Government Ministers to show how youth service cuts are
affecting young people across the UK.
BYC recently shared your experiences as evidence to the
Education Select Committee. This Committee is a group of 11 MPs and
they were running an inquiry into youth services.
Choose Youth!
Choose Youth is
a unprecedented coalition of young people, volunteers, youth
organisations, professional youth workers, and community
representatives who are working to save youth services. BYC is part
of Choose Youth too because we believe our youth service is too
valuable for young people to lose.
Back in January, 2,000 young people added their name to a letter
from Choose Youth to the Prime Minister, in which they spoke of
their fears for the future of local youth services.
Choose Youth have now received a response from Tim Loughton MP,
the minister responsible for national policy on services for young
people, who was passed the letter by Mr Cameron. (Please see the
attached letter, dated 28 February). Choose Youth believes
that this letter has not really addressed the fact that young
people are experiencing cuts to their services, and shows how they
are stuck between MPs and local councillors blaming each other for
spending cuts.
We want to hear from you. What are your views? How do you think
we should respond? Please send us a quote or a comment and we
will include this in our response to the minister. You can post
your comments on the Choose Youth Facebook
page or
email.
The sooner you get back to us, the sooner we can send the
Minister a reply!
Make the case for funding for your youth council...
Due to local councils reducing the money they spend on youth
services, your youth council may have had its funding reduced or
even fully stopped, or face
losing money.
BYC believes young people should be able to tell local councils
how much youth councils matter to them.
Use our guide to find out how you can make the case for
continued investment in your youth council and influence local
councillors on this issue.
You can download the guide here.
