Youthifying the Green Liberal Democrats

My Mission as Youth Officer Part 2:

Youthifying the Green Liberal Democrats

In my first article, you will have seen me discuss my open offer to the Young Liberals to trailblaze on the green agenda. I am now setting a similar challenge for myself in this organisation. I want the Green Liberal Democrats to become one of the best party bodies for youth representation. Ultimately, the climate emergency and biodiversity loss are problems that will affect my generation the most, we will be dealing with the consequences of melting polar ice caps, cut down amazon rainforests, and increasing rates of asthma due to unclean air. So, my challenge has been to ensure that we are in the best position to hear those voices and to make use of their energy and enthusiasm.

The first thing we achieved in this endeavour was sorting out our new youth membership scheme with our Honorary Treasurer Simon Oliver. This allows members to join easily for the standard 1 pound a year rate. Young members who have seen me before will know that I am often relentlessly promoting this scheme, and I will continue to as it is so important that we increase the amount of young people in our organisation. There is still work to be done on recruitment and retention, but this is something I am eagerly looking into.

The second thing we have achieved more recently is the first meeting of a youth working group, chaired by me with the support of our chair Keith Melton. We engaged in a thorough hour and a half discussion around what we needed to be doing to engage young people, both inside and outside of the liberal democrats. This is work I hope to be able to report back much more on in the coming months, but I would really like to take this opportunity to say if you are a young member of the Green Liberal Democrats do email me at oliver.jones-lyons@greenlibdems.org.uk if you would be interested in joining this working group, it is open to all Young Green Lib Dems, our next meeting will be on the 12th of December.

So the question is now, what are my aims for the remainder of my term. They are expressed best by the aims we came to in our first meeting of the youth working group:

1. Engaging outside the party, bringing in experts, bringing out education and engagement with public for both recruitment and visibility

2. Engaging and recruiting younger members of the party to get involved with the Green Lib Dem mission

3. Engaging in a process of youthifying the executive of the Green Lib Dems and greenifying Young Liberals

In order to achieve these steps, i'll be looking to take the following steps: Start running and advertising events for young green activists, as well as getting Young Green Lib Dems onto panels where there are events organised by those other than me, such as the Cross Party Panel ran by Barnet Young Conservatives which I am partaking in next thursday; I will continue to meet and work with the Youth Working Group as well as reaching out to lapsed members from our conference based membership scheme to try and bring them back into the fold and finally, I will encourage as many younger members as possible to stand for the Green Lib Dem executive at the next AGM as well as obviously my offer to the Young Liberal executive to work on becoming operationally green.

It is an exciting time to be a Young Green Lib Dem

See: Greenifying the Young Liberals

Oliver Jones-Lyons