Sadly, as the Speak Out Project is closing down, we can no longer report on Youth Council news. Please visit the Harborough District Council webpage for information.
2026 Jan to March news
Work experience project
We’ve been helping shape how work experience will be offered across the district. It matters to us that placements feel genuinely useful and meaningful, not just something you have to do. We’ve shared what young people actually want from work experience and how it should be organised, so hopefully it’ll feel much more relevant and supportive in the future.
Our new Youth Council logo
Now that we’ve chosen our new logo, we’re planning how to launch it and use it to promote the Youth Council.
UKSPF funding
One project we’re especially proud of is the Finance Champions programme. A Youth Council focus group helped design it, and we recently hosted a full‑day workshop where the programme was delivered to around 20 Year 10 students. We talked about how money and finance are things many of us don’t learn enough about in school, even though they’re such important life skills. The workshop helped students understand budgeting, saving, and managing money in real life. It’s exciting to see something we suggested actually being delivered!
September to December 2025
The Youth Council has had a really busy few months! In September, members took part in fun group activities to share their views and help shape the council’s Community Wellbeing Plan.
In October, students who were interested in taking on roles shared their manifestos, and online voting opened. New representatives were officially appointed at the November meeting, and they’re now settling into their roles.
At the December meeting, members looked at areas where more young people could be represented and came up with ideas on how to reach them. They also started giving their views on the new Young People’s Strategy being developed by Harborough District Council, making sure young people’s voices are heard.
Youth Council members were also invited to be part of the judging panel for the 2025 Community Awards – Young Person of the Year (ages 11–18), which is an exciting opportunity to celebrate amazing young people in the community
We have a new logo!
Speak Out collaborated with Harborough District Council to design a logo for their Youth Council. We wanted the logo to be bold, engaging, fun — with a dynamic, forward-thinking vibe emphasising empowerment. Congratulations to our winner Emily Soper and runner up Cecilia Till.
18th September meeting summary
The Youth Council members have chosen to have roles such as Chair and Vice Chair and we have begun the process of appointing to these roles. We were invited to express our interest in which roles we would like to apply for. The roles will be announced in November’s meeting.
As the consultation for the council’s Community Wellbeing Plan is live, we were consulted on this and we took part in some group activities so our views and opinions can be taken into consideration. We had discussions around what wellbeing means to us and what affects our wellbeing such as the environment and access to healthcare.
Five members of the Youth Council were on the judging panel for the Community Awards Young Person of the Year category. They met up over the summer to go through nominations and selected their winner and runner up. They will attend the event to present the nominees and share the success of the Youth Council so far.
1st July meeting summary
At the last meeting on the 1st July, one of the focus points was around creating promotional videos to encourage other young people to join the Youth Council. The members did some storyboarding to think about how they could structure their videos, making them eye catching and engaging and what message they wanted to get across. They were also consulted on the Open Spaces strategy, which was live at the time, to gather their views on how they use spaces such as parks and gardens and whether they could be improved in any way.
We introduced the young people to the UK Shared Prosperity Fund which has £10,000 allocated for the Youth Council to spend within the funding criteria so they are starting to think how they could spend that.
We announced the Community Awards Young Person of the Year panel members who were selected so there was a fair representation of ages, genders and different schools across the district and we will work with them to shortlist nominees in September!
We also touched on the Local Government Reorganisation and one of the Youth Council members shared her experience of taking part in an online consultation to gather young people’s views on the proposed plans for this.
The Youth Council is having a break from formal meetings over the summer, with focus groups working on specific areas such as the promotional videos, and they will begin again in the new academic year.
4th June meeting update
At the last Youth Council meeting we revisited the different roles we want to appoint young people to and came to the decision that we would like to have a chair and vice chair or two co-chairs, a secretary, treasurer, media and communications officer and an outreach and inclusion officer. We thought about the responsibilities these roles would include and the right sort of candidate for the positions. In September, we are going to start the process of appointing young people to these roles and finalise the structure of the Youth Council. We have also been thinking about how we are going to promote the Youth Council and at the next meeting we are going to start thinking about creating promotional videos to encourage new members.
The Youth Council have been invited to put themselves forward to be on a judging panel to judge the Young Person of the Year award (11-18 years) for this year’s Community Awards! Last year I won this award which was a fantastic achievement!
We will continue to work on our focus areas:
- The environment.
- Skills and opportunities for young people in the district.
- One-off focus groups such as the Community Awards judging panel and there.
- A collaborative competition later with us at Speak Out to design a Harborough District Youth Council logo!
Speak Out editor Natasha Callas tells us about her experience at the first youth council meetings.
“Recently I attended the first Harborough Youth Council meeting with lots of other local young people to discuss issues that affect us.
I joined to try to make a positive difference to my wonderful community. It was a lovely environment to talk to others and I met some great people. Plus, the Speak Out magazine was there to flick through- it was a pleasure to see our work read by others.
We selected the issues that mattered most to us; protecting the environment and helping young people gain the skills and experience they need to enter the workplace were some of the key ones that we have chosen to carry forward and address as a Youth Council.
In the second meeting, which I was unfortunately unable to attend, the other young people gained an insight into the political processes of the council and were allowed to delve deeper into areas that were important to them.
In our third meeting, we discussed the National Youth Strategy, a ‘national listening exercise’ which aims to give young people a platform to express their worries, hopes and ambitions. We were also given scenarios in which young people were struggling to find employment or opportunities for skill development, and we recognised the challenges and came up with some solutions.
Our fourth meeting took place in Lutterworth just after the Easter holidays. We got to see the council housing and business development plans on a map and discuss this with the people at the council who work on town planning. We asked questions and raised concerns. We also looked to the future to talk about attracting new members in September and the roles that we will have, such as chair and vice-chair, treasurer and social media engagement manager.
Afterwards, we enjoy a slice of pizza! Yum!”
