After a year of campaigning by Gwen and her team we are happy to announce that following a debate and vote at a full council meeting Carmarthenshire County Council are backing Votes@16 supporting the motion giving 16 and 17 years olds the right to vote.
Gwen Griffiths who is our UKYP (UK Youth Parliament) member and she is the one who approached Counsellor Glynog Davies with the motion of putting forward the ’Votes@16’ campaign that lets young people vote on issues that impact themselves on a social and political level and how it would change their lives.
As the UKYP Representative for Carmarthenshire, Gwen was tasked with spreading awareness of the campaign over the course of a year which involved getting the support of young people to have their say on the campaign.
On behalf of Gwen and her colleagues at Carmarthenshire Youth Council Counsellor Glynog Davies, Executive Board Member for Education and Children’s Services submitted a Notice of Motion to the Full Council asking that the Full Council to considered the that members support Carmarthenshire Youth Council’s Campaign to see the voting age be reduced from the current age 18 to 16, for all public elections.
The Votes at 16 campaign was the first Notice of Motion to be submitted to Full Council in Carmarthenshire that was initiated by a young person and as such a big achievement for those involved, about this Gwen said “I’m really happy to see that the hard and dedicated work of the Carmarthenshire Youth Council has paid off and the motion has passed through with support from Carmarthenshire County Council… It was a really good experience meeting with local decision makers to raise awareness of such an important issue and seeing how much support that the campaign is gaining.”
Votes at 16 has been an active issue for some time and will continue into 2018/19 as again it has been voted by the UK Youth Parliament as their top priority and is their national campaign for this current year.
You can keep up with the work the CYC is doing for the UKYP campaign for Votes at 16 by following @Youth_Sirgar on Twitter and/or Youthsirgar on Facebook.
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