About Us
The Youth Council is organized in a way that aims to appropriately and effectively represent the youth of Edmonton, and make it easy for members to be involved and pick the area of work in the City that they are want to be involved in.
The Youth Council does two main things in practice:
1. It provides feedback and input to City Council, municipal government and
other various civic committees on issues affecting youth. This is often
accomplished by placing youth councilors on committees for a period of
time in order to give feedback on issues.
2. It works on its own projects it thinks deal with issues important to youth
around the city, and this is accomplished by establishing ad-hoc
committees.
The Youth Council’s functional parts:
The General Assembly (GA) consists of all members of the Youth Council. In 2009-2010, there are 35-50 people on the GA. Meetings of the GA occur once a month, on the first Wednesday, start at 5:30pm and end no later than 8pm. Length of meetings depends on the number of things needing to be addressed. Meetings are open to the publice and are usually held at City Hall but email in advance to confirm. GA meetings serve to provide an overview of all activities of the Youth Council since the last meeting, to allow people to stay informed, learn about what is going on in the city and to make decisions as a group by voting. GA meetings observe procedures as outlined in Robert’s Rules.
The Executive consists of seven elected members from the GA. One city councilor is appointed to sit with the Executive as a non-voting member. Meetings of the Executive take place at least once a month, and twice if necessary, always beginning at 5pm. The Executive acts as the leadership body for the Youth Council and ensures that the group is meetings its mandate.
Standing committees of the Youth Council are permanent, year-to-year committees of the Youth Council. There are currently three: Policy, Service, Social, and Representation. Each of these standing committees is chaired by a member of the Executive, and any GA member can join the committee to help with the work being done. Standing committees set their own meeting schedules to suit their work and needs.
The Policy committee is responsible for overseeing any policy work done by the Youth Council. The Social & Service committees oversees the events that the Youth Council puts on, as well as the social events or service opportunities held for Youth Council members. The Representation committee is made up of Youth Council members who sit on civic committees to ensure that a youth perspective is represented.
Ad-hoc subcommittees are issue-based committees (ie. Homelessness & Poverty, Recreation, Environment etc) that are established by members of the GA. Any member can put forward a proposal to establish a committee on a subject of interest to them, and the GA then votes on whether to establish it or not. A member of the Executive also chairs ad-hoc committees. Any member of the GA can be involved in these groups. These committees set their own meeting schedule, depending on how active they are and what their current projects involve. Members of the public (or non-GA members) can also sometimes take part in subcommittee projects too.
