A week or so ago I made an impassioned plea that we should do everything in our power to support the Lobby. For my part I’m sceptical about influencing MPs on an individual basis, but this is by the by.  What is important is a massive collective turnout to show we are a social force to be reckoned with.

See below for the latest info and hoping you’ll do your damnedest to be there! A silent disco sounds good to an old fart like me!

Chooseyouth Lobby of Parliament, October 25th

This is the big one.

We need 10,000 young people and youth workers there.

Excellent arrangement and briefing details for this event appear on the Chooseyouth website www.chooseyouth.org.

There will be great speakers including many young people from our campaigns around the country and other national speakers. There will be the graffiti wall, a big brother booth, the Dhol Blaster drummers, Banner Theatre, lobbying workshops, banner and poster making workshops, a mass tweet in, action now workshops, and a silent disco outside Parliament.

If we are to have any chance of saving what remains of the service your attendance at this is crucial.

This will be an excellent opportunity for political education with young people and a good day out too. It could also make a real difference but a poor turnout will just encourage the steam roller of destruction to keep rolling.

We need everyone who is attending our Lobby of Parliament to make an appointment with their MP – we want to get our message across to as many MPs as possible from across the political parties. Our youth services are too good to lose!

We have produced a range of resources to support you to do this:

• A guide on how to arrange a meeting with your MP for the Lobby of Parliament
• An example letter/email to send to your MP
• A briefing for lobbyists – which provides all the info you need to make the argument for youth services.

It will only take a couple of minutes to ask your MP for a meeting on the 25 October and it will make such an impact on our campaign. Please let us know by emailing campaigns@byc.org.uk if you do arrange a meeting with your MP by emailing us. Remember if you are in a group you could arrange all to meet your local MP at the same time.

We will be running training throughout the day which will help you feel confident about meeting your MP. There will be lots of support for first time lobbyists.

Choose Youth wants to make sure that everyone has a safe and constructive time at our Lobby of Parliament. We’re asking everyone who registers for our event to download and fill in a consent form (if you are under 18 download this form here, if you’re over 18 download this form here) and bring it with them on the day. We have also produced Joining Instructions for the day so you can print these off and bring them with you too.

We are still working to try and provide free and some subsidised transport to the event and if you need further information in regard to such opportunities for attendees to travel on discounted transport, please let us know.

Thank you again for your support for this campaign.

ChooseYouth Lobby of Parliament

Date: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 from 11:30 AM to 4:30 PM (GMT)

Location:
Methodist Central Hall
Westminster
SW1H 9NH London
United Kingdom