Waltham Forest Youth Engagement Groups

Waltham Forest Council is currently recruiting all three of the council’s Youth Engagement groups.

Please find more info below, please do encourage your young people to apply, currently they can ask for applications forms from the contact below, which can be emailed or sent in the post.

The three groups are:

The Youth Independent Advisory Group (YIAG) are interested in community safety issues and are trained in conflict resolution – they run regular sessions at PRU’s & the YOT and also engage with the police on Stop & Search procedures and how they deal with young people. The YIAG are young people, some of whom are ex-offenders, victims of crime or come from areas where youth violence is a part of their lives. The YIAG have been commissioned to do large piece of work for the borough’s Gangs Prevention Programme. They also input into the Community Safety Board, the Stop & Search group and the gang’s monitoring board, A Better Way Partnership. They are funded by the MPA and paid for the peer trainer work they do.

Young Advisors are trained consultants paid to look at the council and its partner’s services to ensure they are youth-friendly and advise on how to make services better for young people locally. This year they have worked on: mystery- shopping of sexual health services for young people, acted as Census ambassadors and got more people to complete them and helped organise an event in the council chamber after the riots to look at the positive work young people in Waltham Forest do. They have trained councillors in how to engage young people and also took part in a ‘riots panel’ discussion at the Department of Communities and Local Government.

The Forest Flava Press Gang is a team of budding young journalists who write articles on local issues for Waltham Forest News manage their own website www.forestflava.org.uk and make films to engage with other young people. Older members of the Press Gang each year recruit, train and mentor the new cohort. They are looking at working more closely with the council’s other Youth Engagement groups in the future. Press Gang members can also get accredited through their work with AQA qualifications. This year the Press Gang have done some work on the Waltham Forest Welcome (Olympic Volunteering programme), inputted into an event after the riots highlighting the positive work young people in Waltham Forest do, and assisted LBWF Greenspace with a film workshop and tree planting day for young people.

Each group will be recruiting a new cohort of young people aged between 13-21 years, who will all be given training, some with accreditation. With all groups the existing young people score the applications and where there are interviews, sit on the panels.

For more info and application forms for all the above, please contact Jane Brueseke, LBWF Youth Engagement officer, Residents First, Room 104, Town Hall, Forest Road, London E17 4JF. Phone: 020 8496 8105. Email: jane.brueseke@walthamforest.gov.uk

Deadline for applications is Friday 6th January 2012.

Jane Brueseke
Youth Engagement Officer
Community Engagement Team

Residents First, Room 104 Waltham Forest Town Hall

020 8496 8105