Council of Youth of the Municipality of Cieza
The Council of Youth of the Municipality of Cieza is developing its activity mainly in six areas: Training, Grants and competitions, Workshops, Youth Information Service, Local Youth Employment Centre and Leisure and spare time.
1. Training
Together with the Institute for the Youth we organize yearly courses, workshops, educational actions directed to young people in the fields of Youth. Those are educational actions proposed and initiated by the municipalities and are carried out together. This year we organize a course of Laughter Therapy and a Workshop of Group Dynamics.
2. Grants and Competitions
— Grant for university transportation aid. Addressed to the students that reside in the municipal district of Cieza and that study in one of the public university centres of the Region of Murcia and that frequently find themselves forced to use means of transport for their travel, which means that there are high costs for the family economy.
— Competitions: the council considers the contribution to the promotion of creativity of the young people one of its top priorities to, just as the promotion of the conditions for free and effective participation in cultural development. Because of this, and because of the high participation rate, the council organizes a contest of open air painting for young people.
3. Workshops
— Summer and Christmas Workshops: addressed to children of the town of age between 4 and 12 years, offering them a socio-educational and playful alternative during the holiday period (month of July and the first two weeks of August and the Christmas holidays). These workshops are about entertaining the participants, but also about the children learning through workshops and excursions, while at the same time meeting children of their own age.
4. Youth Information Service
The Youth Information Service takes the problems and needs of the young users as a starting point. Because those cover a wide range of questions and problems, the centre is organized to answer directly to a large number of subjects, or to refer the users to other relevant services in the requested field.
The service is designed to try to answer the needs of the youth. It is open to all young people, no exception, without need to make a prior appointment. We provide information about a broad variety of subjects. The information offered is practical, pluralistic, exact and regularly updated. We personalize the attention to each user, respecting anonymity, providing him or her with a broad offering of possibilities and promoting his or her autonomy. When necessary, we refer the user to a specialized service.
5. Local Youth Employment Centre
The centre is integrated in the regional Network of local employment centres created by the Institute for the Youth, with the objective to advise and facilitate labour market access for young people.
6. Leisure and spare time
The Council of Youth is aware that the way young people spend there time may involve important risks for the youth, especially in the small hours of the weekend. In Cieza currently there are few spaces set aside for different forms of active leisure, and that is why the council of youth offers an alternative to the usual night time leisure, fostering cultural and sport activities and boosting existing municipal resources during the weekend evenings and nights, having the contribution of acknowledged youth associations that are familiar with the youth and associative reality involved in Cieza. The youth associations themselves plan and carry out some of the workshops.
In 2008 two leisure programs are elaborated, the first one “Young Cieza” (Cieza joven) was developed between January and August, the second one “Young Fall” (Otoño Joven) between September and December.
Field Work Medina Siyasa, in the first half of August 26 young people aged between 18 and 26 from different geographical areas in Spain, combine excavation field at the walls of Siyasa, with leisure activities.
Youth Debate League: this is an unprecedented activity in the town, based in dialectic confrontations. Each weekend there will be two debates held about current affairs, en each one of the debates the teams made up of a maximum of five participants will defend the posture that was decided earlier by drawing lots. The debates are always about controversial questions of social interest and eminent topicality. It is a unique platform to get to know the opinion of young people about the problems of current society.
This last initiative is the one that the municipality wishes to develop and share during the implementation of the project.