MenuCouncillors Dargue, Lewis and Weir took part in Local Democracy Week with pupils from two of our schools.
The morning was spent at James Calvert Spence College South Avenue with year 7.
It was decided to use a recent widely discussed topic- the poor conditions in the Welfare Park Recreational facility- to demonstrate democracy in action. Council allocated a small sum of money to be used for whichever theme was chosen by the pupils.
There was a short presentation about Democracy and the work of the Council then the year was split into 3 groups each of whom was given the task of preparing a presentation on a chosen theme for the whole group. The three themes were based around Dog Fouling, Litter and Graffiti. A Councillor accompanied each group to help with the discussions.
The presentations were well prepared and a lot of thought went into the reasons why each of the themes were socially unacceptable and ideas of how to discourage these actions and thus improve the area for all who use it.
Voting slips were marked, placed in the ‘ballot box’, then counted. By a small margin, the year group decided that the money should be spent on the issue of Dog Fouling.
Whilst lots felt Dogs should be banned altogether, it was understood that this would be difficult to enforce. So owners would be encouraged to be more responsible by keeping their dog on a lead, only using the perimeter and keeping off the recreational areas; most importantly to ‘Bag It & Bin It’. Members will now work in consultation with Amble Development Trust to put the pupils’ ideas into action before Christmas.
In the afternoon, Links First School was visited where democracy and voting were discussed with a small lively group who saw 3 cartoon characters as ‘candidates’ for their votes. As part of their activity, they each coloured their chosen character and these will be made into badges for them to wear. It was very encouraging to find that even at their young age they had a good grasp of the voting system having just held elections for their school council.
We all agreed that this is a really enjoyable part of a Councillor’s role; we welcomed the opportunity to go out into the schools and join with them in furthering their understanding of how things happen in their town and gathering ideas from them of how they would like the town to develop in the future.