Cork Views: 'Being a part of my local young council gives young people a voice'

Being a part of my local youth council, Cork City Comhairle na nÓg, gives me and other young members aged 12-17 a chance to discuss and take action in tackling issues important to young people, both in Cork city and in Ireland as a whole.

Comhairle na nÓg is funded by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth DCEDIY.

The Cork City branch will be holding our Annual Youth Conference on October 20 at the Millennium Hall in Cork City Hall from 10am until 1pm. The event welcomes any young person from schools, youth clubs and centres across Cork city, aged 12-17.

The Youth Conference is organised by the young people of Cork City Comhairle na nÓg ourselves. The aim is to collect the views and opinions of all of Cork’s youth and to recruit new members onto the council.

At our last conference, young people voted on housing as the issue they felt was most important for the council to work on.

Throughout the day on October 20, Cork’s students will hear speeches from members of the youth council about the work we’ve together completed over the last year on our housing project, and will have the opportunity to express opinions regarding housing and other issues.

We are working with the Creativity & Change programme at MTU Crawford College of Art & Design, who are helping us design creative and interactive activities for the event. We will also be providing a snack table and a youth panel that will discuss housing.

The attendees of the conference will also have the opportunity to apply to join Cork City Comhairle na nÓg.

To be a member of Comhairle is to both represent your school or youth centre and your local Comhairle na nÓg to talk about your chosen local issue and look at ways we can make an impact.

Comhairle na nÓg encourages new and existing members to speak about their thoughts to make a positive impact while also creating new friendships among peers and creating a safe and inclusive environment for all.

The chosen topic at the previous annual Youth Conference that everyone agreed on was the homelessness and housing crisis in Cork, and the youth council focuses on how all of us as a group can make a difference to the voted problem.

In recent years, Cork City Comhairle na nÒg has been part of the national day of creativity, known as Cruinniú na nÓg, to promote the awareness of the issues that we are working on.

This year, as part of our project on homelessness and housing, we ran an event called Insert Home Here. Members gathered ideas in order to show young audiences through many activities and workshops what is happening with housing, while exploring the meaning of home, living spaces and responding to dereliction and the housing crisis through art and creativity.

Another aspect of being a member of Comhairle na nÓg is interacting and collaborating with the other Comhairlí through yearly national meetings such as Dáil na nÓg and the national showcase.

At the recent Dáil na nÒg, Comhairle members from across the country came together to meet in the Dáil chamber and discuss topics such as the Irish education system, with a particular focus on how the Irish language is taught in schools.

A few members also participated in the Regional Networking Meeting in July, where we met with Comhairle members from across Munster in Limerick to discuss issues such as youth spaces, public transport and mental health, while also sharing what each individual Comhairle was working on on that moment and the projects that they had completed.

It was a great opportunity to discuss these issues with those of different backgrounds and experiences, and was enlightening to all that attended.

Over the past year, as part of our housing project, we met CATU (Community Action Tenants Union) who showed us the work they do, the union’s focus on community building, and how they empower people to advocate for their housing rights.

We have also collaborated with Derelict Ireland to study the dereliction in Cork city. We discussed the causes of dereliction like property hoarding and the need for penalties to be enforced on owners of derelict buildings, as well as a need for incentives like rate reductions for groups wanting to convert these spaces into buildings that benefit community groups.

Our youth council also comes together four times a year to talk in ‘Steering Group Meetings’ where we meet with community leaders, youth workers, academics and council representatives to discuss how the government can take steps to end the housing crisis, which would imply building more social and affordable housing, increasing support for homelessness services, looking at how social and affordable housing are all publicly built and owned, government controlled rent prices, and increasing tax each year on buildings and houses left derelict.

If you or anyone you know would be interested in becoming a member of the youth council or learning more about it, please sign up for our Annual Youth Conference. We invite all young people 12-17 to come, especially those that have taken an interest in politics and activism or just feel the need to have their voices and opinions heard. If you have any more enquiries about the conference, contact us on our Instagram page @Comhairle_cork or email elaine.howley@ymca-ireland.net or carolyn.collier@ymca-ireland.net.