To reform and closely regulate Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) to ensure young people do not miss out on payments

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

How this impacts is that for all young people who are attending further education, it means that they will be able to apply for EMA without the fear of losing payment due to poor organisation of the payment scheme that is currently in place. What this means is that it will not deter young people who rely upon the use of EMA to attend further education from applying into further education institutions.

What would be the ultimate goal of this campaign?

The ultimate goal of this campaign will be to reform the process in which EMA is handled at the moment. The Region would like to see that the handling of payments of EMA is more efficient, so that young people actually get their payments on time and not weeks after they are meant to, as well as making it easier to get disputes sorted quicker then at present.

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

The challenges that the region expect to face are:

• Getting in touch with the relevant authorities who deal with EMA
• Getting young people who are not necessarily affected by EMA to support the campaign
• Reorganizing the structure of EMA in time for the new Education year (September 2009), though a more realistic time is to do it in time for September 2010.