Info Sheet for Young Citizens (& Parents / Carers)

Dumfries & Galloway Citizens Panel

What is the Citizens Panel?

Dumfries & Galloway (D&G) is the first UK region to state the bold aim of becoming “Net-Zero” by 2025. “Net-Zero” means having no impact on climate change, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions while also removing them from the air.

While this is incredibly important for our future, it isn’t at all easy!

This is why we’ve been asked to put together a team of people from 6 places across D&G to help Government with ideas on how to do it: Dumfries, Stranraer, Annan, Langholm, Kirkconnel and Kelloholm, and St John’s of Dalry. Each place will have 15 panelists, 4 of which have been reserved for young people.

Why should I be involved?

  • If you have passion and ideas, and feel motivated by helping to build a sustainable future, this is a golden opportunity for you to make a difference. You will get to work with other young citizens on what you think is most important to the place you live, and present your ideas to people with the power to change things. For sure, you (and we) will learn a lot on the way.
  • We believe the involvement of young people in the Citizens Panel is absolutely essential, and hope you agree? Climate change is an issue where the views and voices of young people should matter most, and are so often missing from discussions.
  • In our experience, young people always provide necessary and intelligent contributions to such discussions, and include vital details which adults miss.

What is involved?

We promise to do our best to ensure taking part in the Citizen’s Panel is as easy and enjoyable for you as possible.

Our plan is to have 4 Meetings between now and the end of the Summer. The first is by far the most important and will take a morning and afternoon on the same day, but we will provide you with lunch and refreshments.

The other 3 Meetings are all online and will take about 1-2hrs. You won’t need to do anything outside of these, and you don’t need to attend them all if you don’t want to.

MEETING 1: What’s good for young people in the place I live, and what needs to change? (March-April 2022)

  • In this meeting, you’ll be working with  a team of 3 other Young Citizens from the place you live to discuss and agree a plan of the places and changes important to you, your friends and classmates, and other young residents in the area.
  • At the same time, 12-15 adults from the local area will be working on their own plan separately. Later on, you will share and discuss each others’ ideas. You’ll learn a lot from each other.
  • We’ll put everything you’ve told us together and then send it back to you to make sure we haven’t missed or misunderstood anything.

MEETINGS 2-4: Working with young people (and adults) from across D&G, as well as climate change experts, and Government to decide what needs to happen (May-August 2022). In these meetings you would be (in order): 

  • Talking about your ideas and learning with young citizens from the other 5 places, to discuss and agree which priorities you share or are specific only to where you live.
  • Sharing what you’ve agreed with the adult citizens, and vice versa, and also with climate change experts for their ideas. 
  • Presenting your ideas directly to people in local Government and others with the power to change things, and discussing and agreeing what needs to happen to meet “Net Zero” where you live and across D&G as a whole.  

Other Info:

Ethics:

If you are under-16 consent from your parent/carer and you is required before participation. The form only takes 3-5 minutes to complete and is available via a link here. You or your parent/carer may contact the project lead below through email should you have any concerns before, during or after the project.

This Project follows legal and advisory frameworks around researching with children and young people, and all facilitators are on the PVG Scheme.

While there is no intention to delve into issues that could upset you, we recognise that climate change can be a big and worrying topic for young people. However, we do find that talking together and doing something about it is often the best way of addressing concerns. Still, if you did find subject matter challenging, you are free to withdraw your consent, and from the project, at any point and we will respect that decision immediately.

Please feel free to discuss any concerns you may have with us before or after the process if that would be helpful to you or to your parents/carers.

 

Data Protection:

Community Chartering Network is the data controller on this project and upholds the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. The main form of outputs will be those produced by the young people, but there may be instances where photos, speech or video are recorded for the sake of advancing the work of the Citizens Panel. For further details of how any recordings will be processed and stored, you can contact the project lead below.

 

For Further Information:

Please contact Dr Jamie Hamilton (Director), at citizenspanel_DG@communitychartering.org