Powerful young voices

Marlborough’s new Youth Council is keen to see young people following Youth Week 2025’s theme, ‘Take our Place’, at collaborative, creative events during this Youth Week.

As Cat Forsyth and Oscar Mason take taken their places as Marlborough Youth Councillors, they are hoping to see fellow young people engage with community-focused events this week.

“We’ve got quite a few things, we fund a quarter of the cost of the MySpace garage mural painting through the week, as well as our Leaders for Readers event at the Library on Thursday”, said Oscar.

“As Youth Council, you’re treated as proper councillors and put into this environment where you can get a feel for how real Council works, with your other counsellors and being able to represent young Marlburians with any causes they have.

“It’s really nice to just have that responsibility and feel part of a team.”
And with the Youth Council’s increased focus on multi-year legacy projects, Cat and Oscar are in prime position to set the tone they would like to see future students take up.

“For me I’d like to help lay a platform for more school-to-workforce transition help, because everyone wants experienced hires, but it can be very hard to make that move for students,” says Cat.

“I’d like to work on making youth aware of how our environment is, which isn’t great, and like Cat getting youth connected with people and building relationships so their talents can be fostered,” says Oscar. “Change starts with us and it’s our generation that’s going to have to do the work, so I want to foster those relationships between council, experts and young people.”