In July, Youth Parliament welcomed Denis Kings to join them during his work experience placement. During their placement, Denis was able to get an idea of what Youth Parliament is and what it does and have the opportunity to do various tasks that helped him to understand participation and engagement. Denis has kindly put together an article about the week.

Hi, I’m Denis Kings and I’m 15. I attend school in Taunton. I like listening to music and enjoy going outside during my free time. I’m hoping start to go hiking and fishing. I really enjoy politics in terms of political systems and theories. I’m pretty good at debates and public speaking so I wanted to find out more about what Somerset Youth Parliament about.

So, this week I’ve been doing my work experience week with the Somerset Youth Parliament support worker Kate. It has been an enjoyable experience. From what I understand, Youth Parliament is a group that aims to improve the lives of young people through campaigns and lobbying decision makers.

Over the week I was set various tasks including research, exploring the meaning of Youth Voice and representation, designing interactive activities to engage young people and start debates, discussions and written articles, creating a campaign manifesto and I created a speech about what adults need to understand about young people.

What I find interesting is the use of online means such as Teams and Zoom to communicate, which means that people in more remote areas can still easily communicate with the group.

I’ve learned the value of expressing my experiences as well as political standing with the group. It has changed my thinking as I’ve now learnt to take other people’s consideration on if I want to create a more successful campaign or movement of my own in the future.

Denis