Youth Voice Award (YOVA)

The submissions are open for youth voice award

“Youth Voice Award” video

The Isle of Wight Youth Council welcome submissions for their Youth Voice Award “YOVA”.

The award, developed by the Youth Council, aims to recognise outstanding engagement by schools with young people.

The award has three tiers:

  • Gold
  • Silver
  • Bronze

Criteria of the tiers ranges from having a “you said, we did” board or page at Bronze tier to having a student on the board of governors for Gold tier.

Details of the scheme were first shared with schools in 2018 and the Youth Council has had a few positive responses and made some awards

If you want to know more about the “Youth Voice Award” a video has been produced by Tom Jackson, previous Chair of the Group, to explain and promote the launch of this service. It can be found on the Youth Council’s YouTube channel along with their other social media feeds. You can watch below.

Further information on YOVA

The Youth Council, is elected every two years and come together each month to talk about Youth Issues. The aim of these meetings is for the youth Council to make and take steps to improve things for the Young People of the Island, working with teams from the Isle of Wight Council and organisations such as the Hants and IOW Police, Youth Commission and the IOW Youth Trust.

At the launch Tom Jackson, of the Isle of Wight Youth Council said:

“We have had some great responses to far and are looking forward to receiving submissions in the coming weeks. YOVA is one of the major steps we’ve made recently to bring the Islands young people together so we can have a real say on the services that affect us.”

Application process

  1. In order to be awarded schools must complete the Yova application form (PDF, 260KB, 3pages).                                                                                                                                                                      
  2. Once the form has been completed please email it to youth.council@iow.gov.uk for the Youth Council to process your application.                                                                                                              
  3. We will send you a response letting you know if you are successful or not once the application is processed.

Thank you for expressing an interest in The Isle of Wight Youth Council’s “Youth Voice Award” (YoVA).

Please note:

YoVA awards stay in place until the Youth Council learns of a change in standards or the school reapplies to progress to the next tier.

Applications are accepted at any time, but awards are only handed out at three points during the academic year: Christmas, Easter and Summer. We recommend submitting your application a month in advance of these points to allow us time to review what you have sent in.

If you need assistance with your application, please contact the Youth Council: youth.council@iow.gov.uk