Having served on the Youth Cabinet for just under a year, since March, I have been able to experience first hand the significance that the Youth Cabinet has in helping our young people - the next generation - to gain access to the political processes that we can easily understand and take an active part in.

Although the youth cabinets membership extends up to 27 members, representing each of the county's six districts; the impact of the cabinets work goes much further. I would like to very briefly speak about a few of the activities that the Youth Cabinet does;

In our 'Make Your Mark' campaign, an annual national campaign where young people get to vote on the issue that most matters to them before MYPs (Members of Youth Parliament) debate the top three in the House of Commons, we received just under 1000 responses from young people in Worcestershire alone - a blatant contradiction to the misconception that 'young people are politically apathetic'

Likewise, in our Take-Over-Day Initiative - a national work experience programme organised by the Children's Commissioner, and regional youth workers, (the youth workers who organised it this year are also the youth stokers who support the youth cabinets work) just under 300 young people were engaged in this in Worcestershire alone, taking over positions in both the public and private sectors, including MPs, Council Chief Executives and directors of a range of public and private services, proving that young people not only have an interest, but also actively do get engaged with the various processes that are on offer to us.

However, vital to this engagement is the support that we as young people are given from our youth workers - whose positions are under threat, with one redundancy already made. Nevertheless, the response that we have had from a diversity of people including local politicians, regional organisations and private and public sector corporations throughout the county has been astounding, although the future of our organisation is still uncertain, but being planned.

I would like to finish off by thanking everyone for taking such an interest in what we do, and hope that you will continue to be part of that in the near future.