Local youth show plenty of interest at first council meeting

There was plenty of interest shown in forming a new Youth Council with a big turn out for their first meeting last Friday.
Cobar Shire Council’s new youth officer Natalie Prisk said the meeting was an incredi-ble success with lots of great ideas coming out of their brainstorming session.
“We had 15 youth put their hand up to join the Council and 11 participated on the day during an initial brainstorming session.
“They were engaged, positive and very moti-vated to make a change!” Nat said.
“They produced over 80 ideas on how they could make life better for the youth of Cobar.”
Some of the ideas included a variety of events such as: dedicated Friday night events at the pool (races, team events, movie nights, water fights), laser tag, a Colour Run, a haunt-ed tour of the museum and writing, acting and opera classes.
“We have all our fingers and toes crossed that restrictions ease to run these events!” Nat said.
The group also discussed community engage-ment and ways youth can become involved in the community including: volunteering option with established groups in town that may need extra assistance; and helping with the Cobar Business Association’s activities like the Christmas Street Parade.
The topic of youth health was also discussed with an idea put forward to have youth repre-sented on the Cobar Health Council.
Other health matters included introducing new sports programs such as Rugby 7s, boxing classes and a basketball program for youth.
The meeting also discussed drugs and alcohol issues and prevention strategies as well as ac-cessing sex education information.
Nat said they were keen to source and offer youth leadership training opportunities along with some resilience training.
Ideas to help youth learn to drive, buy a car, write a resume, find out about a trade, apply for youth allowance, get a tax file number and other life and employment skills were also discussed at the workshop.
“As a group we are now going to work through this list to see what we can viably achieve and what assistance the Youth Officers can provide,” Nat said.
The Cobar Youth Council will hold their elections in December and Nat encourages youth to think about taking on an executive role which will help gain experience as a leader (president), as an administrator (secretary) or in the area of finance (treasurer).