Youth Council reforms

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32563, 24 March 1971, Page 22

Youth Council reforms

About 30 young people from widely differing youth groups in Christchurch met yesterday to re-establish the Canterbury Youth Council which went into recess last year.

Among those represented were the University Students’ Association, the Teachers’ College Students’ Association, demoninational church youth groups, Jaycees, the Country Girls’ Club, Senior Girl Guides, Rangers and Venturer Scouts. Most of the meeting time was taken up forming a constitution for the council to base its activities on. The format that was finally adopted suggested a dual role of the council. Proposing this format, Mr M. N. Ward, president of the council and representative from the Young Christian Workers’ Movement, said that the council

should comprise two closely associated groups. “The first group should be an association of the delegates of all affiliated organisations and the second an active inquiry team of volunteers who are not directly responsible to their organisations, but whose aim is to work among youth, both those who belong to an association and those who don’t,” said Mr Ward. Both these groups would be responsible to the one executive, he said. “The council needs to investigate the large section of youth who don’t belong to any organisation, no matter how intangible this group may seem, and this would be the main activity of the second group in the council,” said Mr Ward.

Topics for the council’s discussion in 1971 are to include the establishment of a youth liaison officer on the City Council, the possibility of inviting sports bodies to join the council, a youth arts centre, a social education course and racial integration and development. Officers elected were: patron, Mr A. R. Guthrey; president, Mr M. N. Ward; deputy president, Mr D. Thomas; secretary, Mr I. C. Bathurst; treasurer, Mr C. Snow; executive, Mr P. J. C. Calder, Misses M. A. Flanagan, M. C. Johnston and P. C. Saville. I