Choose Youth - National rally to save young people’s services
7 February 2011
Where: The
Renewal Centre, Solihull West Midlands, B91 2JR
When: Saturday 12 February – 12pm-4pm (doors open at
11pm)
1,000 young people to grill members of parliament on why
government cuts are crushing their hopes for the
future
Around 1,000 young people and youth workers representing hundreds
of thousands of users and staff of the main youth organisations
will quiz MPs on why government cuts are hitting young people hard,
amid mounting fears that youth services will be the first public
service to disappear.
The Choose Youth rally in Solihull on Saturday 12 February,
organised by an unprecedented coalition of 27 young people's
organisations and Unite the union, takes place as deep funding cuts
threaten to wipe out youth support services across the UK.
The rally will bring young people and youth workers together to
organise the fight to defend their services. The day will
focus on how to organise campaigns to stop the cuts with a session
from a 12 year old campaigner from the prime minister's Witney
constituency who has been working tirelessly to save his local
youth club.
Unite, the union for youth and community workers, is warning that
so fast and deep is the government’s cuts agenda it is sounding the
death knell for the 60 year, professional, publically-funded,
universal youth services in this country.
Guests to the panel debate include Julie Hilling, Labour MP for
Bolton West, and Lorely Burt, Liberal Democrat MP for Solihull.
Despite repeated requests a number of Conservative MPs have
declined the invitation to attend*.
Leading youth organisations including the British Youth Council and
the Youth Network will make contributions to the day, but the main
focus will be young people themselves speaking out about the threat
to the services they value. Special workshops aimed at supporting
grassroots campaigns will be held, and the whole day will be MC-d
by an award-winning young poet Kurly.
Speaking ahead of the rally, Len McCluskey, Unite general
secretary, said: “This government’s short-sighted and damaging cuts
are crushing the hopes of our young people.
“Young people have been hit disproportionately hard by this
government’s cuts programme. Student tuition fees are to rise, the
education maintenance allowance (EMA) has been axed, the Future
Jobs Fund dismantled. One in five young people are
unemployed. It is madness then to deny them the other
remaining route into fulfilling their potential as adults - a
dedicated, 24-7 service provided by professionally trained youth
workers.
"This government may not be re-treading Margaret Thatcher Milk
Snatcher but they are fast on their way to being hope
crushers. A generation of young people, who are being made to
pay for a crisis not of their making and getting nothing but pain
from this government, will never forgive them for crushing their
futures."
Throughout the UK youth clubs and projects, young people’s
volunteering schemes and a wide- range of voluntary-led youth
programmes are all now at risk of closing as councils race to shed
the services they provide.
It is not just council run youth projects at risk; many voluntary
and charitable-led organisations also face severe funding cuts. 70
per cent of funding for the voluntary sector, particularly for
youth services, comes from local authorities.
The government plans to replace the professional, 365 day-a-year
youth service with short-term summer projects. The National
Citizens Service (NCS), a privately-run scheme, will be costly to
run and offer young people far less.
ENDS
For further information please contact the Unite press office 0207
420 8917 Or Chantal Chegrinec 07774 146 777
*Efforts to ensure a full cross-party representation are
on-going.
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