Viewing: 5Rights Youth Leadership

5Rights Youth Leadership

Our guest blogger today is Oliver McLachlan. Oliver has recently joined a youth leadership group focused on the digital rights of young people. It’s brilliant to see Oliver get involved with this exciting project which has the potential to make a difference to young people across the country. Well done, Oliver.

The 5Rights Youth Leadership Group

 

I am thirteen years old and I attended my first Coderdojo club around three years ago.  It was in the Greenhills Library in East Kilbride and it was the club where I started my passion for coding. I had realised a little time before that I would like to learn about coding and I had a great time at this club.  Once the sessions had ended my dad and I looked around to find another club and this was when I found out about the Coderdojo at the Science Centre in Glasgow. I have been going to events there for a number of years and I find all of the people there, Craig and Natalie and all of the others members of the club really kind and helpful.

I also go to the Coderdojo sessions at Gorbals Library on a Saturday and David who manages the club is absolutely fantastic at working with you to achieve what you want to do with your coding. He is patient, kind and fun. Being a part of Coderdojo is good and I have attended events and focus groups to explain what I get out of going to the clubs and I think that it is good that people listen to the views of young people like me.

A few months ago Craig from Coderdojo sent an email to everyone who goes to the club to say that Young Scot were looking for people aged 11-19 to be part of the 5Rights Youth Leadership Group.  I applied to join the group and had to attend the Young Scot offices for two days of interviews to see if I could be a member of the Youth Leadership Group.

I was successful and I am one of the youngest in the group.  When I was interviewed and asked what I would bring to the group I said that I would bring a younger perspective!

The 5Rights are the digital rights that are important to every young person.  Young people like me use digital devices every day and I use my devices more each day. However as young people we need to be protected because we are more vulnerable than adults when it comes to some of the bad things that can happen when you use the digital world.

The 5Rights are:

  • the right to remove
    (the ability to easily edit or delete all content they have created)
  • the right to know 
    (the right to know who has access to their information and who is benefitting from it)
  • the right to safety and support
    (the right to feel confident that they are safe from illegal practices and can get the right support if they need it)
  • the right to informed and conscious use
    (the right to feel inspired to reach creative places online, but also feel able to switch off from it at any time)
  • the right to digital literacy
    (the right to be taught the skills to be able to use create and critique digital technologies, and given the tools to negotiate changing social norms)

The 5Rights Youth Leadership Group was launched last month by Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Tourism and External Affairs and Baroness Beeban Kidron who founded the 5Rights movement.

The group is split into five different sub groups and I am in the Young Digital Champions sub group.  There are five of us in the group and our job is to make a programme to teach young people about their rights in the digital world.

The Youth Leadership Group meet for a weekend every few months and we have work to do in between meetings.  I really like going to the group because we get to discuss real issues that are important to us and other young people and we have the support to make sure that our ideas are considered and taken forward.

We have a lot of work to get through and I am excited by the work and the challenges that we might face in making sure that our group complete a sensible and workable programme to encourage young people to be a part of the digital world and also keep safe.

If you ever see a member of the group you will recognise us by our hoodies!

The launch was fantastic and it was good that important people came and spent time with us and discussed the issues that we face in making sure that the 5Rights are enforced.

I still attend my Coderdojo clubs and know that without them I would not have become a member of the 5Rights Youth Leadership Group.  I will keep you updated on how I get on in the group.

 

For more information about the Young Scot 5Rights Youth Leadership Group, visit http://young.scot/5Rights.

You can have a look at the report by the Young Scot 5Rights Youth Commission to the Scottish Government, on how young people’s rights can be supported in the digital world.