Leeds Children’s Mayor winner presents manifesto to council

The Leeds Children’s Mayor winner will present his manifesto ‘When It Comes To Keeping Kidz Active – Leeds Leads’ to all 99 councillors at this week's meeting of full council.

Joe Smith,10, who attends Strawberry Fields Primary School, focused his winning manifesto on how public gyms could create ‘kids zones’ using smaller and specially built equipment for children. He proposed that the same machines could be used as adults, but would also have in built games to keep the children engaged and interested in the exercises.

Joe’s manifesto beat 10 others to gain the largest share of the 3000 votes cast via the Leeds Learning Network and Breeze website.

The Leeds Children’s Mayor competition is an extension of the previous ‘Mayor For a Day’ contest and allows the winner to participate in activities throughout their year in tenure as children’s mayor.

Already, Joe has accompanied the Lord Mayor at the switching on of the Christmas Lights, hosted the gala dinner and judged a film competition for the North of England Education Conference, and taken a trip in the Lord Mayor’s Limo to his school where he presented an assembly.


******************** Media opportunity ********************

Date and time: Wednesday, 20 January 2012, 1pm
Venue: Council Chamber, Leeds Civic Hall
Event: Leeds Childs Mayor, Joe Smith, presents his manifesto to 99
councillors at a full council meeting.
Please contact the press team on 0113 2474450 to arrange attendance

******************** Media opportunity ********************


Leeds Children’s Mayor winner, Joe Smith said:
"I am excited to be able to talk about my ideas to the council. I think it is very important for kids to be more healthy and have more exercise so I hope my plan will help.”

Lord Mayor of Leeds, Councillor Reverend Alan Taylor said:
“The Children’s Mayor competition is a great way for local government to interact and engage with kids, teaching them the importance of local government and what it is we do.

Hopefully through schemes such as this we can reach out to more children and teach them the importance of being part of local community and the councils part within that.

“I look forward to listening to Joe’s manifesto, and no doubt so will my other colleagues in the chamber.”

The initiative falls in line with a larger national initiative to encourage younger people to get involved in local government and understand how it works as part of the Local Democracy Week.

Ends

For media enquiries, please contact;
Michael Try, Communications Team
Leeds City Council
Tel: 0113 247 4450
Email: Michael.Try@leeds.gov.uk