Devon Parliament

A time for change...

Devon Link-Up and Devon People First have been working together to set up a Devon-Wide Parliament.

The Parliament project supports our learning disability community to speak up for other people. We will speak up about the things that are important, such as transport, benefits and rights.

We can speak up for each other by becoming Members of Parliament (MP's).

Elections are held where people we can vote for the candidate that we want as their MP.

Please take a look at our film to find out more. Just press the play button.

If we want to be MP's we have to put ourselves forward as candidates. To be MP’s we have to make a commitment:

* We must want to speak up for people.
* We must attend meetings.
* We must want to help people.
* We must be good a listening to people.

We have had training days about the Parliament project. We have been supported to stand as candidates and attended candidate training workshops.

During the workshop, we thought about how we would be good candidates. We also made candidate posters, rosettes and worked on our campaign speeches.

A media worker from Voices from the Margins helped us create our posters and film the workshops.

In January there was a Devon-Wide Parliament conference where all our different parliament groups talked about what we had been doing.

On Tuesday 23rd February 2010, People from Teignbridge, South Hams and West Devon voted for their MP’s.

We had two voting forms to complete.

One was to choose an MP for our area.

One was to choose an MP to look at an issue, such as transport or healthy living.

The voting forms had pictures of the candidates and the reasons why they should be chosen.

The votes were carefully counted and the new MP’s were elected.

This is an important step for democracy for people with learning disabilities.