Surrey Heath Youth Council (SHYC) is a local Eikon youth group that works to improve the lives of young people in the area and represent their voices on a variety of social issues.
We work on a range of different local projects throughout the year based on positively impacting young people, sometimes working with different local councilors to ensure youth voice is heard. We vote different members in to run different aspects of the group, such as a group Chair and an email manager.
“I joined SHYC because I wanted to help make a change in my community. I also wanted something to put on applications for things.”
We recently completed a survey to measure the impact of SHYC on our members. We found out that…
“It’s fun and we achieve meaningful change that benefits young people”
“socialising and making friends”
“helping the community”
“It’s great and I’ve been able to talk to people of all ages without getting worried”
“I like how we are mostly independent”
Our most recent project has been a cycling project in which we conducted a survey with over 300 responses and worked with local councilor Paul Deach.
We are also doing a mental health project, which involves making a leaflet about social media posts spreading information about mental health for young people including:
One of our biggest projects was the TEDxYouth@SurreyHeath event we hosted in July 2021 at Camberley Theater. The event consisted of five speakers talking about a range of topics like unconscious bias as well as living independently and mental health. The speakers were from a range of organisations including Surrey Pride, Children’s Cap and Fearless Outreach. We had a live audience and a YouTube stream with over 200 views to date. Through the event we inspired local young people, recruited new members and got good publicity for the group! You can watch the event here.
To find out more about SHYC, go to our website and follow our social media pages.
If you want to join us and help make a positive change in Surrey Heath for young people, then register your interest here.
Written by Surrey Heath Youth Council
