Citizens Somerset and Bristol Citizens Youth Accountability Assembly: Young leaders secure commitments on community safety
Citizens Somerset and Bristol Citizens Youth Accountability Assembly: Young leaders secure commitments on community safety
At the end of April 2024, weeks before the Police and Crime Commissioner elections, young leaders from across the Cabot Learning Federation held an Accountability Assembly, hosted by Bristol’s City Academy and attended by the four candidates to be the next Police and Crime Commissioner for Avon and Somerset.
Months of listening, building relationships and developing policy culminated in the event, which saw students from Bristol, Weston-super-Mare and Somerset – representing schools including Hanham Woods Academy, CLF Post 16, and Broadoak Academy – join other regional civil society organisations in sharing stories and making asks to the PCC candidates.
Candidate made commitments to ring-fence funding for community-led interventions into knife crime and youth violence such as sports, to roll-out their Blunt Truth knife crime training more broadly, to work with Citizens UK organisations to develop a charter for better relationships between local police and their communities, and help to reduce poverty by playing an active role in developing the Living Wage movement across Avon and Somerset.
The voices and views of our children are critical to creating a safer community now and in the future; working with Citizens UK as part of our wider Voice strategy has enabled our children to be taken seriously and to be a powerful force for change.
Sally Apps, Executive Principal of the Cabot Learning Federation
Many schools (primary, secondary, and sixth form colleges) choose to become members of Citizens UK to build a better, fairer society.
Using community organising, students, teachers and parents can work together to drive community-led solutions to big and small problems, that work for everyone.