Devolved Nation awareness training in all schools across the UK

How does your campaign have an impact on all young people?

This is a necessary UK wide campaign which is relevant to all young people across the UK. There is no doubt that the current generation of young people in the UK are very active and are keen to impact on a wide variety of issues. There are many examples of success stories where young people are already affecting positive changes, both in terms of Members of the Youth Parliament and also the youth population more generally.   

However, we feel that if the youth population is to become as effective as possible, we must unite to tackle the issues that are relevant to all.  A crucial element of this that is missing right now is the ability for young people from all four countries in the UK to work together.  This is because of the fact that there is limited mutual understanding of the history, culture and youth issues of the four nations among young people from neighboring parts of the UK.  Our campaign has the potential to bring about this understanding, which will have benefits for all young people.

This campaign would challenge the severe lack of knowledge, understanding and perhaps even tolerance of all four nations that make up the UK.  It could be argued that, at present,  most young people receive  more education about the history of Germany than they do about the history of the devolved nations and England; this should not be the case. 

We feel that such lack of understanding weakens our ability to collectively campaign to improve life for all young people across the UK.  Educating young people in schools will create more cohesion and tolerance, and will enable our generation to work to our full potential in all future campaigns, and more generally in everyday life.

What would be the ultimate goal of this campaign?

The ultimate goal of this campaign is to have sufficient training implemented in schools to allow young people from all over the UK to have a better understanding of each other, which will in turn break  down the barriers that some young people currently face in participating in UK wide activities. 

This will make future campaigns, both those carried out by the UK Youth Parliament and by other groups or individuals, more successful.  It will also create a more tolerant and well informed generation of young people, with the ability to affect positive changes that reflect the needs of young people from the whole of the UK. 

In addition, we as a generation would become an inspiration to our political representatives, as we would be a shining example of how real politics should work by coming together to find common ground, while also embracing and celebrating the differences that make each nation of the UK individual and unique.

What challenges do you expect to face if this was to become a national campaign?

We realise that this campaign is not one that is currently a priority within government; there are probably many campaigns which are much more in the spotlight in this time of recession and economic crisis.  However, we feel that a campaign that is proactive rather than reactive, such as the one we are proposing, is an ideal way to focus on something which has massive potential for positive outcomes; this could be the good news story that everyone needs in the midst of all the doom and gloom.

Also, there is no doubt that what we are campaigning for is quite a big ask and that anything relating to changes in curriculum will take a lot of effort and possibly time. We recognise this, but also realise that the potential outcome far outweighs this fact.  We are willing to put all our effort into sharing our experiences with our neighbors across the UK, and hope that you will vote for this campaign and do the same to ensure that all our future campaigns are not held back by the same barriers and limitations that previous ones have been.  We want our successes to be realized and celebrated in ALL nations of the UK…do you?