Leonita Metaj City Hall Speech

Congratulations to Year 13 student Leonita Metaj, who gave a fantastic speech surrounding the importance of rebuilding relationships between young people and the police.

The full speech can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXbWyf9vY-g

Leonita has commented about the work that she does with the Young People’s Action Group in conjunction with London's Violence Reduction Unit:

“The Young People’s Action Group (YPAG) are a team of 10 young Londoner’s who work together to tackle issues that affect young people. We do this through targeting four sections of society that we work towards improving: the Police, Youth Workers, Education and Parenting. An example of some of our work within the policing sector was working alongside the Mayor of London to deliver a speech about what young people want to see in the next police commissioner; and the information that was delivered within that speech was gathered by me and my colleagues conducting research with other young Londoner’s on what they feel the police system is failing at.

Over the past year, working within the YPAG team has really opened my eyes to the real world. It has shown me the positive sectors in society but it has also conveyed to me how many improvements need to be made to help our youth. It is essential that young people have the voice to talk about how they feel towards these institutions, and our motto ‘nothing about us, without us’ really highlights the changes we want to see, having more young people talking about matters affecting them.”

Leonita Metaj, Year 13

For further information about YPAG and London's Violence Reduction Unit, please follow the link below:

https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/violence-reduction-unit-vru/young-peoples-action-group