All about the Scottish Youth Parliament
Our vision is of a stronger, more inclusive Scotland that empowers young people by truly involving them in the decision making process. We do this through our Members (MSYPs) who are elected young people aged between 14- 25 representing different areas and voluntary organisations from across the whole of Scotland. Every year we have at least three national meetings where we discuss issues which affect young people and try to propose new and sometimes radical solutions to these problems.
We are a young peoples parliament, designed by young people, led by young people and for the benefit of young people. The SYP is totally youth-led and all of our Trustees are 25 and under. We listen to and recognise the issues that are most important to young people, and ensure that by representing them at a national level their voices are heard by government and formal decision makers.
We encourage all of Scotland’s young people to play their part in achieving our vision and provide a national platform for their participation in democracy. Working towards our aims, we promote the following values.
Every 14-25 year old in Scotland has two MSYPs representing them. We follow the same areas as the Scottish Parliament meaning there are 146 Constituency MSYPs and we also have organisation MSYPs from a number of organisations like Scottish Epilepsy Initiative and the British Deaf Association.
Elections are held every 2 years and the next election will be in March 2013.
You can find out more about the SYP, what we do and who represents you at http://www.syp.org.uk and you can connect with us on Facebook & Twitter at http://www.facebook.com/OfficialSYP and @OfficialSYP.
This years Scottish Youth Parliament Campaign is…
Love Equally- SYP’s campaign for marriage equality.
We think that two people who love each other should be able to get married.
It’s as simple as that.
We want to live in a Scotland where:
Same-sex couples are allowed to get married if they want to
Mixed-sex couples are allowed to register a civil partnership if they want to
If religious organisations want to perform same-sex marriages and civil partnerships, they should be allowed to do so
We urge the Scottish Government to work quickly on making this a reality
Young people in their thousands have told us the law should be the same for everyone. Research shows the majority of Scots of all ages support marriage equality. This is a reality in 10 countries already, with several others moving in that direction – don’t let Scotland be left behind.
We recently combined with partner organisations where together we handed in over 24,000 consultation responses to the Scottish Government over Marriage Equality.
