STEP UP
PAGE 9
POSITIVE CONTRIBUTION
Youth parliament in the spotlight
In December nearly 7000 young people in Croydon took part in voting for
new Members of Youth Parliament (MYPs) and Deputy MYPs to represent the
borough in 2014. This year, the newly-elected MYPs and DMYPs will speak for youths
aged 11-18 years old who live, study or work in Croydon.
Benie Bopeno, a Year 11 student and prefect at Norbury Manor Business &
Enterprise College, has inspired many, because despite her stammer, she is
passionate about being a voice for the youth in Croydon. Benie was elected as MYP
along with Jesus Ghafavokhi. Here, Benie shares her ambitions and vision in her new
role.
What is Youth Parliament and what does it do? Youth Parliament is an
organisation for young people where they can get together and find an issue that
they would like to tackle.
How did you get involved with Youth Council? I saw a poster in my school and
contacted them by phone.
Why did you want to get involved? I want to make a difference. First of all, I’m
disabled. I have a stammer. Basically, sometimes when I’m talking I tend to start to
repeat myself over and over again, which is a form of a disability because I’m
stopping myself from saying what I want to say. So, I just wanted to be the voice of
youngsters with any disability and make a change.
What is your campaign? Because I’m disabled myself, my manifesto was
about disability. But, when I mean disability I mean any type of disability. I promised
my constituents that I would open more mainly disabled youth clubs and other fun
activities where they could go and spend time with others with the same or even
different disabilities. It will be beneficial because they will be surrounded by others in
the same boat as them. They will be able to socialise more easily, and they can just
feel at home.
What changes do you want to make in the future? I just want people who
don’t have disabilities to treat others with disabilities equally. My ambition is to make
people aware of the disabilities that other people may have. People seem to be
treating disabled people differently which is unfair. This unfair treatment means that
some disabled people feel as though they do not fit in to society.
Jesus Ghafavokhi is also a Croydon MYP. Will you be working together? Yes.
My campaign is about disability and his campaign is about human trafficking, so it
kind of hard [to work together], but we can try and help each other out. So, I may
have ideas that will help benefit his campaign, and vice versa. We support each
other.
Article
Are you interested in politics for your career? Yes! I want to be a barrister so I reprodu ced
think being in Youth Parliament now would open up that pathway. I want to do
from the
Croydon
criminal law and would love to be a judge when I’m older.
Guardian
To contact the Croydon’s MYPs, email them at [email protected]