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Yo,

I'm Josh and I have recently started my apprenticeship with the youth of today, this is actually my first ever blog, so, I will try and make it as interesting as possible! This is a brief overview of what I have been getting up to…

Anyways, I have started going college on Friday afternoons doing and NVQ in Youth Work, my tutor Jeni is a bit of a ledge! We get to play a lot of games, and get involved in role play, as you can imagine it is pretty jokes! So, it is quite a ‘hands on’ active course, I highly recommend it!

I am an Essex boy, (only by location, not by anything else), and I currently work 3 days a week at my local community venue, getting involved in loads of different activities involving Young People, business and enterprise, it is fun and challenging, and I am learning bare! I will also be helping at a drop in centre, which I am looking forward to.

And, on a Monday I have just started work at the Citizenship Foundation up town. The people here are really nice and I am excited about starting work with the Youth Leadership Team! I got my own desk in an office, its proper!

So, yeah, I tend to baffle but that is what I do. I will be blogging regularly about new endeavours and cool things that I am going to be getting up to!

Peace.

I found this interesting feature on BBC2’s Newsnight and felt I had to post it to the attention of the youth of today.

The feature posed the question of has the “baby boom” generation of the post war 50’s & 60’s ruined things for the young - enjoying an economic boom, low tax, and big pensions while the young are unemployed, saddled with debt and unable to buy houses?

Here is some inspiring poetry from a couple of our participants in Birmingham based on their shadowing experience with the City Council.

Around a half of children and young people have been victims of age discrimination, according to a recent survey.

The survey, carried out by ICM for the Children's Rights Alliance for England (Crae) found that 49 per cent of seven- to 17-year-olds said they have been treated unfairly because of their age.

Around a quarter of the same age group say they are treated unfairly during everyday activities such as shopping or using public transport.

Around one in five experienced discrimination while visiting a café or using local sports facilities.