Making positive changes and getting kids offline

Local TV

Nirushan, a director at a youth forum in Cardiff says that young people need positive influences in their community, not influencers in online communities.

Transcript

00:00So I work at the Youth Forum, it's a space for children and young people to gather in

00:06my local neighbourhood in Cardiff, in Grinch Town, and it's a space for young people to

00:13find themselves, take part in activities and make a difference.

00:17Young people nowadays have grown up with the internet at their fingertips.

00:20From a young age, young people are connected across the world, and with the positives it

00:24can bring, there are countless negatives on top of that too.

00:28Online spaces can be daunting for parents and their children, and the influences and

00:32opinions shared around can be damaging to young people.

00:35So community groups are trying to bring those young people into spaces that can be a positive

00:39in the real world, and away from what happens online.

00:43And Nirushan says that he can see the impact himself and his group has, saying that young

00:47people want to make a real tangible difference to their communities.

00:51It's interesting because I think, you know, especially in the last few years, I think the

00:57space online has become increasingly polarised, lots of very loud, powerful voices that are

01:04coming through.

01:04But I think what we're really seeing is that a lot of young people that are coming to us,

01:09or wanting to take part in our activities, actually want to make a positive change in their neighbourhood,

01:16and are looking for inspiration, not in those online spaces, but actually more locally, in their own

01:22networks, in their own relationships, in their own neighbourhood.

01:25I want to understand, actually, that the world that they're growing up in, that they can make

01:31that tangible difference.

01:32The National Lottery have played their part in communities across Wales and the rest of the UK.

01:37And Nirushan's Youth Forum have a space to enact positive change for the young people who are a part of it.

01:42And he says that having the space is vitally important to his local community.

01:46Yeah, so the National Lottery Community Fund supported us in giving us the bid to set up a community building

01:54through a building communities grant, alongside an awards program to set up a local youth forum.

02:04All of that allowed us to, for our day to day, to set up a building that was for everyone to use in our

02:12local community. So it's in Graveshans called the Gravesh Pavilion. And it's essentially a space where

02:17lots of different activities take place, from art, sports, music, dance, anything you can think of,

02:23you can hire out the space. But within that, there's also a space for a youth forum that runs independently.

02:29Nirushan says that it's important to remember that young people don't always just blindly follow

02:34what they see online, and they understand a lot of the nuance of opinions that they read.

02:39He says that young people just need a space to share and collaborate on their thoughts,

02:42without all the noise of online spaces.

02:45I think more often than not, though, I think young people are super aware of people's,

02:51why people are saying what they are, what's driving them.

02:55Much more nuanced than what people might seem that they think young people are consuming.

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