An insight into the latest trustee conversations

The British Youth Council is a charity and therefore has a Board of Trustees. Trustees act as lead representatives of the charity and we have a legal responsibility to act in the best interest of the charity and guide the strategic direction. We talk about a whole range of different topics that all feed into the way the charity operates.

Our last trustee board meeting took place on 31 May 2022. The trustees would like to share a few important things with our members and supporters, so Board business is more open and transparent to you. The important topics we have picked are a mixture of things that were discussed at the board meeting and big things coming up for the charity.

Our latest three big things were:

•  Environment Policy
•  Membership Engagement
• Trustee Recruitment

Environment Policy

We know how incredibly important environmental issues are important to young people. The past few years we have seen this moved up the agenda and pushed towards the forefront through school climate strikes and environmental issues starting to appear in the top issues in Make Your Mark over the past few years. Whilst we have done a lot of work to support young people in making a change in this area, the charity itself was yet to take any structured action to reflect on and change our own contributions to the climate crisis. We wanted this to change. Therefore a ‘Green Team’ made up of staff with some trustee involvement was created to have these reflections and consult with young people on this policy. A policy has now been created and the Board of Trustees passed this new policy at the last meeting. The policy includes looking at areas like our supplier relationships, how we organise future events and ensuring funders reflect these green values. This is just the beginning of our journey, and we will be looking at continuously improving in this area.

Membership Engagement           

COVID-19 meant that face to face events with our members have been severely limited the past 2 years. Now that we can hold in person conventions and conferences, we are really excited about meeting more young people who are part of our membership or programmes. Some events have already taken place and some trustees have had the pleasure of attending them. We will be attending more in the near future. We know how important it is to because to meet our young people so we can truly be connected and engaged with you, and understand your views and needs; it all helps us become better trustees for the charity. I joined the Board in 2020 so personally I’m very thrilled to go to my first in person event soon!

Trustee Recruitment

This was not discussed at the Board meeting as recruitment is being organised by an independent group of trustees, including myself. However, we felt it was important to use this space to let you all know that recruitment has launched! We are looking for new trustees and a new Chair to join our Board.  

As mentioned earlier, we set the strategic direction of the charity. It is important to have a board filled with young people with different skills, different life experiences, and different views who are interested in working together as a team – a team who have a strong passion to do what is best for young people. We talk about lots of strategic areas including finance, risk, equality, diversity and inclusion, environmental issues, membership engagement. If you are aged 16-25 and this sounds like something you would like to do, make sure you check out the information available.