To highlight what leadership looks like and means to young people, how they may already be in a position of leadership by their actions / choices, stand strong and share with us.
During Youth Week itself, there will be two distinct versions of YouthLaws' participation in the 2023 theme, to cater for differing ages and engagement interests.
1) We will have an online callout for bright ideas from any young person / people, under the drafted project name; "Prime Time". Under this banner, we will be asking for either written or video submissions with young people sharing bright, wacky and wonderful ideas of a rule, idea or law change they would make if Prime Minister (or school principal for a day). There will be criteria around these ideas that they need to state why the rule / change / idea needs to happen and how it is of benefit from three different perspectives that it impacts. ie/ young people, school, environment… or Young people, parents, community… or Young people, businesses and health… etc etc
We would like to see ideas from young people aged primary upwards.
These can be shared online if consented in the process. We aim to have a panel to hear and feedback on these, including current MPs and youth. If some ideas originate in the school environment, YouthLaw would be happy to help where possible in the actualising of these ideas. Prizes for the top three ideas as voted online by the young people and community.
For this project, we would really like to give young people a platform to share and be heard. We would love to instill a feeling that opinions and ideas matter in a way that is achievable – and we can all have ideas. Being election year, for the older bracket of youth, we would like to strengthen the notion that policies are just ideas that are for the betterment of the majority. That in order to make a sound policy (idea) that it needs to take into account multiple perspectives and that hopefully when voting – these ideas make a difference.
2) We aim to create a physical representation of the young leaders we already have in Aotearoa. This will be done by hosting an interactive space that spells out the word 'leadership' using a huge number of boxes!
Each box will show one of the entries. We will be looking for people to submit what leadership means to them, what leadership looks like and how it has been shown. This could be in any given way – visually represent leadership in photos, images (photos of students making the word with their bodies, scrabble pieces, words in the sand, made out of rocks etc, pics of their peer leaders in a group – leading a game or looking after someone etc) sharing with us someone who has shown leadership and how etc etc.
During Youth Week, we will be starting to receive and bring together all the entries / submissions from young people across the country. We will print out the photos, quotes and stories to stick to the outer faces of the boxes. We hope that by the Friday of Youth Week, we have enough stories to share to create the whole word 'leadership'.