After I left unversity and before having my children, I was a substitute teacher in Mehodist College, Belfast for a while. At the time I intended to complete my PGCE and follow a career in teaching. However, the universe had other plans for me and I ended up in the crazy world of local politics and Council! I must admit that I thoroughly enjoy the work and the challenges that my job brings me; but one big plus has been that I have become involved with wiorking with children and young people from all backgrounds. I became involved initially by attending local democracy and young people weeks with council and doing "Question Time" type interviews with some students from local schools.
This, like many things, has snowballed and taken on a life of its own and now forms a considerable part of my work in Ballymena. Most recently I have been involved with a group called Common Purpose and one of their aims is to encourage young people to develop leadership skills. I first worked with them and a group of young people from the North Antrim area on a debate around curfew. During this I was the technical adviser as to how a debate in Council works as the students were discussing the pros and cons of curfew in a public meeting format. Once we got them going there was no stopping them and they were all keen to put forward their viewpoints.
I will be attending the next Common Purpose conference in Ballymena Showgrounds on June 9th, so hope to see some of you there. I will also be adding a subpage explaining how council works and what responsibilites we councillors have. (less than you might think!)
