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During the summer of 2013 , David Ward, the Member of Parliamentfor Bradford East and his team went on a tour of his constituency.The aim of the tour was to talk to young people aged between 16and 24 living in some of the most deprived parts of the countryabout what matters to them, to encourage them to register to voteand to find issues they could campaign to change together. Thisreport tells the story of our project.

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Get on the Bus

 A report from theoffice ofDavid Ward MP

Get on the Bus

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Project BackgroundThere is much evidence to support the view that that young peopleperceive politics as dull, boring and irrelevant, difficult to access andpolitician as remote, and that young people have low levels of interest in and knowledge of politics. (White, Bruce, Ritchie 2000).Bradford East is no exception.

In our constituency there are around 24,0000 young people, over aquarter of the population is aged between 16 and 29. There are alsoan estimated 12,000 people who are not registered to vote.

Research by IPSOS Mori, 2010 found;

“There are clear ‘at risk’ groups in voting, registering and engagement – young people, ethnic minorities, lower social grades etc. Promotion of engagement and knowledge among these groups should be focused on.” 

It is in places like Bradford East that unless work is done toencourage participation then decision-making risks beingunrepresentative. Against that background that the “Get on the Bus”project was born. The project linked together an MP’s Office Teamwith the Council’s Youth Services and young volunteers toencourage participation in areas with multiple deprivations, somewith a high number of young people of a South East Asian heritage;

others an almost exclusively white British heritage.

Working with the Member of Parliament for Bradford East the projectworked with young volunteers recruited from across our communityto engage with other young people to identify what are their topissues. The volunteers were supported by the MP’s constituencyteam, fully trained and apprentice Youth Workers. Young peoplewere encouraged to “Get on the Bus” to discuss their issues,

develop a local manifesto and participate in voter registration andbudgeting activities using materials from the Bite the BallotCampaign.

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Preparation workThe team designedthe logo to be usedon our T-shirts andbadges.

We designedquestionnaires touse in the streetwith young people.

Youth workers, volunteersand David’s constituencystaff team were involved indesigning the project and

were trained together to usethe Bite the Ballot materials.Participants were each givena facilitators guide andencouraged to use thematerials in different settings.

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We used as a base for ourproject a single-deck bus whichwas hired from a local communityproject, Hale (Health Action Local

Engagement).

This gave us somewhere to meet,carry out work with young peopleand for David’s casework team aplace to provide a mobile surgery.

Barbar was our driver, our

biggest supporter, our Mr Fix-itand our very welcome King of theTeapot!

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 radford’s Youth

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o u n g  P e r s o n ’ s  V o t e r R e g i s t r a t i o n  F o r m 

Working with the ElectionsUnit at Bradford Council welaunched Bradford’s Youth

Voter Registration Form.

Qamer Maqsood and MaryamSajid signed up the firstyoung person in Bradford touse the new form.

Voter Registration

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Bradford Community Broadcasting agreed to partner

the project by broadcasting one pre-recorded and twolive shows each week. This enabled us to record andshare what young people were telling us.

With the help of Daniel Carroll, BCB’s Youth RadioWorker and his volunteers we broadcast a mix ofmusic, views from young people, discussions and livequestions. Young people were invited to participate in

live broadcast discussions and ask questions throughsocial media.

Young volunteers used I-pads, their phones anddicta-phones to collect interviews in the streets.These were emailed to Daniel for broadcast.

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materials. Our original intentionwas to use the Bite the Ballotmaterials in the streets but thisproved difficult to organise(weather, nerves of theparticipants, space required) so wemoved indoors to youth clubs

where it worked much much better.

David’s staff team ran somesessions as did some of the youth workers. Youth workers havebeen trained, have the materials and plan to run more sessions inthe future. David’s team are using the materials with post-16students in local schools.

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Bite the Ballot is a campaigncreated by young people to

inspire others to speak up and bea part of the decisions thatdirectly affect them. MichaelSani, Chief Executive of Bitethe Ballot came to Bradford toteach volunteers, youth workersand David Ward’s staff team howto use the Bite the Ballot

Bite the Ballot

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Places we visited

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What the people said..

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“Good to work together in

 partnership. Brought a real

understanding of democracy

to young people. Lookingforward to doing more work 

together in the future”.

Paul Johnson, Area

Manager, Bradford East

Youth Services

“Really great! Brought real life

 perspectives on the importance

of voting. Showed young people

how they do not have any power 

if they don’t register to vote.

Really enjoyed the session”.

Paula Helliwell, Social Action

Lead, National Citizenship

Programme

“This is exactly what community broadcasting is all about. Going

out into communities and talking

to them about the issues they

care about. We want to roll it out

across other parts of Bradford”.

Dani Carroll, BCB’s Youth

Radio Worker

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“We dealt with David’s casework on the

 bus. People were really surprised that we

had the systems all set up on a bus. A

great - if unusual was to run surgeries.

Exhausting but fun”.

Rachel Sunderland, Senior Caseworker

“Everyone says it is important for politicians to engage more with young

 people but the question is, how? I have one of the busiest constituencyoffices in the country but young people are not queuing up outside the

door! The answer to the question is to go to where young people are i.e. on

the streets, in the parks, in the youth centres. And when you do engage

with them what do you find? You find that they are interested in issues,

they do have opinions and they do want to be heard. To the hundreds of 

young people that we met I would like to say a big "thank you" for your 

time and courtesy. My team and I had a great summer - and I look forward

to repeating it next year!”

David Ward MP

“It was really interesting. I’ve

never done anything like this

 before. I learnt a lot about politics and am going to keep in

touch. I’m looking at the news

to see what’s happening in the

community. It’s given me

knowledge. I wasn’t really

interested before. I’ve learnt lots

of different skills about meeting

and interacting with people”.

Kaneez Fatima, Volunteer

“As a young person from Bradford

studying politics, it was very

interesting to see first hand David’s

efforts to try and engage more young

 people with politics in the city”.

Michael Powell, Volunteer

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This summer has been an exhilarating,exhausting, exciting experience which hasleft me at times deeply moved by thechallenges faced by young people and

optimistic for their ability to take on thosechallenges in equal measure.

It would not have been possible without thefinancial support of the many people who arelisted individually or collectively below.

Rajeev Deweedi

Seafresh Foods

CFA Projects

Jaz Athwal

Alan Griffen

John Cole

John Briggs

Alun Griffiths

John Pashley

Jennifer Pearson

Lord William Wallace

Edward Mac Millan Scott MEP

Rebecca Taylor MEP

Local businesses and residents of Bradford East

 Thank you