We witnessed some fantastic decision making at last week’s Youth Council Meeting after introducing the concept of critical friends, that is to be supportive but not afraid to ask the tricky questions using critical thinking in decision making.
For the first half of the year, we have been working with the Youth Council to set their objectives and develop tools and a way of working to enable them to make change. Much of this work has been setting them up for success.
This week it was wonderful to see them putting it all into practice as they got into some nitty gritty decision making.
Students discussed four opportunities in groups and then presented back to the whole Youth Council. This was followed by a motion, further discussion, and a vote on each motion.
- Discussion groups were full of energy
- High School students helped the younger Councillors
- Ideas were challenged in respectful ways
- There was no ‘gut feel’ decision making today!
Other agenda items
- After agreeing to take up a communications opportunity with RANT Arts, the group discussed creative ways that they could communicate their messages (more to come on this next month).
- Mr Josh Salter presented some new concepts for the Burnie Counts program – Youth Council gave feedback and presented their own ideas.
- Previously the Burnie City Council requested input into their CBD Strategy. Youth Council provided the outcomes from their previous placemaking workshop as well as a workshop they had done around these questions – ‘The things I love about Burnie’ and ‘The things I wish for Burnie’.
