The Department of Energy and Climate Change has just launched a Youth Advisory Panel. This year, they are compiling a ‘2050 energy pathways report’ and have just created a Youth Energy Pathways survey to help them find out what other young people think. They are looking for as many responses from young people as possible and would really appreciate it if you could forward this message to all the young people you know, complete the survey (if you’re a young person) and forward to all of your youth networks (if you work with young people). Perhaps you could also tweet about it and put it on Facebook? The link to the survey is: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PBXHMRG. It is open until Tuesday 27th July, so a pretty rapid response is needed!
Katie Haywood volunteers with the Worcester based environmental youth project, The Hive, and is also on the DECC Youth Advisory Panel, see her blog at - http://uniceftagd.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-beginnings.html. The Youth Advisory Panel also have their own blog at - http://www.youthpanel.blogspot.com/.
Young people today get a bad rap. Amazingly, research shows that 46 per cent of adults believe there is a negative view of young people in society. It’s not fair. And more importantly, it’s not accurate.
So O2 have launched a fund to put balance to the scale. Young people aged 13-25 across the UK now have the opportunity to apply for a cash grant of £300 to support a local community project. Those successful will also receive a package of training and support to help them make the most of the cash investment. In addition to this, there will then the opportunity to re-apply for a further £2,500 cash injection.
The great thing about this is having a small fund for projects and then some more money to develop it further, which is all to often missing in other funding streams.
Source : O2 blog
Around half of social networking websites are failing to keep young people’s personal details secure, according to European Commission research.
The commission looked at the policy and practice of 25 websites across Europe that signed up to its Safer Social Networking Principles last year and found that just 40 per cent ensure profiles of teenage users are only visible to friends.
The research also found that only half of websites, including Facebook, YouTube and MySpace, made it impossible to find private profiles of under-18s through search engines.
In addition, just nine out of 22 websites responded to complaints submitted by their users.
The commission also found that around half of teenagers readily give out personal information online. It has now launched a campaign called Think Before You Post!, aimed at raising awareness among teenager internet users about the dangers of parting with personal information online.
EU commissioner for information, society and media, Viviane Reding, said: “I expect all companies to do more. Minors’ profiles need to be set to private by default and questions or abuse reports have to receive quick and appropriate responses. The internet is now vital to our children, and it is the responsibility of all to make it safe.”
Source : Children & Young People Now Magazine
A Thin Line is a digital safety education resource produced by MTV in collaboration with other media partners. The purpose of the site is to education teenagers and young adults about the possible repercussions of their digital activities
