Volunteer Corinna joins the national Inform100 project
Inform 100 is a project where young people will help Audit Scotland look at public services in Scotland. In partnership with Youth Scotland the aim is to make young people’s voices heard about public services that affect Scotland’s communities. A group of Young Advisors has been selected to participate in consultations to give feedback as public service users. Academy volunteer Corinna has been selected as one of the advisors. She recently attended her first residential training weekend. Here are her reflections.
In September I attended the first Inform100 residential with 14 other young people aged 12-25. Inform100 is a new programme from Youth Scotland and Audit Scotland which aims to get a core group of 20 young advisors to put across the views of young people on the way money is spent on public services in Scotland and where they feel changes should be made. On top of the 20 advisors there will be a larger forum of 100 from all over Scotland who will contribute new ideas and build on existing ones to build as true a reflection of young people’s thoughts as possible.
Our first residential was at Stirling Youth Hostel and this was the first time we all met each other, much of the two days was focused on team building and making sure everyone was comfortable in the environment. At first everyone was a bit quiet and hesitant as it is a new environment with completely new people but by lunch we were all settled and it took the staff from Youth Scotland a while to get us to stop talking and go to bed on the Saturday night!
Through making a set of ground rules as a group and creating a chain out of them it emphasised the idea that for the programme to work we all have to follow the rules or else the chain would break, as would the trust in the group.
Throughout the two days we did various activities with Audit Scotland to try and establish an issue or idea that we all shared about spending in Scotland. We all agreed that Mental Health was an issue we felt strongly about that needed more funding. Our next residential is on November 10th and I am looking forward to seeing everyone again and excited to see how this programme will shape through the two years!
