I have been with the Youth Panel for about 5 years now, it all started from a small group in high school talking about things like toxic relationships, where to go for help, sexual and abusive relationships, how to make the world a better place etc. 

These talks we had were extremely useful especially at a young age where schools don’t really teach you useful information that you need to know while growing up things like keeping safe, where to go for help, making the right decisions etc. The youth panel are extremely thoughtful and very caring - they didn’t make the meetings boring and even asked what we wanted to do in our next meetings, they always bought some sort of food or snack whilst taking notes and giving them our opinions and ideas on certain things.

The small gestures they would do made us trust them and get closer and made us all want to help people all around the world and spread love and kindness to everyone, this could be either to the younger generation, the older generation, or people in general. 

I have personally taken part in a few projects e.g. how to make Burnley a better place, trying to get the older and younger generation together and meet as one, earning money for charity. We grow more day by day and learn so much more new things, this has helped me over the past few years realise and learn a lot of things I didn’t know when I was still a child, they taught me how to be independent, gave me the confidence to speak for myself, letting me know that I am always safe and that there’s help if I ever needed it, that there’s someone always there to help and support us all in everything that we do. It isn’t just for us but it is also to make a change in this world to let people see that there are people that care and want to help you, that want to spread the love and kindness. This helps me with my future to make my own decisions, to understand things in deeper depth as I am going into adulthood so I want to thank them for everything they have done for us when we were children all the way up until now - I will forever be and stay grateful for us the Change Makers! 

Thank you, Ivana!