Votivation Partners With UK Youth Parliament To Canvass Opinions and Views

Votivation, the social enterprise resource for opinions, polls and petitions online, is to engage the UK Youth Parliament’s users by acting as the organisation’s preferred voting system to around 300,000 young people.

The UK Youth Parliament is made up of over 500 elected Members aged between 11 to 18 years of age from across the UK and the next elections, which will use the Votivation online polling system, are to take place in January 2008.

The partnership will also enable MP’s associated with the UK Youth Parliament – i.e. Natascha Engel, Charles Hendry and Jenny Willott – to use Votivation as a platform to convey relevant messages, policies and proposed legislation to young people via the site. Votivation will effectively act as a testing ground for new ideas and initiatives amongst an audience of tomorrow’s electorate, citizens & consumers.

Votivation is an innovative and unique social enterprise that connects individuals with organisations - whether companies, politicians, charities or celebrities. It provides routes for democratic and stakeholder engagement by providing tools to run effective, free campaigns that allow individuals to convey their voices.

Votivation is also the leading sponsor for the UK Youth Parliament’s Debatable Magazine which generates debate about current events, decisions and issues that matter most to the younger generation. Debatable reaches over 5000 young people and decision makers

In addition to facilitating the voting for next year’s UK Youth Parliament elections, a Member of the Youth Parliament will be appointed to Votivation’s International Advisory Board, to help the company’s objectives of delivering the most effective means of engaging young adults in today’s society.

Through Votivation’s unique and immediate market research social network, members can generate instant feedback on key issues, actively promoting their views and opinions.

Membership of Votivation is free. Moreover, Votivation offers members unique opportunity to ‘Earn & Give’, a concept created to reward members for their involvement in the website with a percentage of generated cash donated to their chosen charity or good cause.

Tom Lodziak of the UK Youth Parliament said: “Votivation is going to be an extremely valuable platform for the UK Youth Parliament. Last election we saw voter turnout increase by, in certain cases, as much as 1775% with the introduction of mobile phone voting. This year we are expecting to see another huge increase in voter turnout and our partnership with Votivation provides LEA’s with another potential voting platform.

“A large part of the UK Youth Parliament success comes about because we engage and involve so many young people. Votivation will be a powerful tool to us as we will be able to seek opinion on current issues, policies and proposed legislation on a large, national scale via the site. This information will be invaluable to us and will help our 500 UK Youth Parliament Members to bring about change on a national, regional and local level.”

Craig Jones, Director of Votivation, commented: “This partnership recognises the importance in voicing young peoples’ opinions. Votivation offers the UK Youth Parliament an effective forum to test key messages, supporting young people’s views and enabling them to be heard.’’

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For further information please visit:
www.votivation.com and www.ukyouthparliament.org.uk.

Pete Goold
Punch Communications
Tel:01858 545 959
pete@punchcomms.com
www.punchcomms.com
Notes to Editors

About Votivation:
Votivation is a unique stakeholder social network that connects citizens with organisations they have a stake in; whether corporates, politicians, charities or celebrities. Through the opinions, polls and petitions generated by Votivation users, the company provides a unique way to influence public figures and companies. Votivation provides a unique and immediate market research facility providing instant feedback on key issues, consumer products and service. Its unique ‘Earn and Give’ concept rewards members for their involvement in the website as they can earn cash, at the same time donating a percentage of this to charity.

About UK Youth Parliament:
The UK Youth Parliament is made up of over 500 elected representatives: Members of the Youth Parliament. They are between 11 to 18 years of age from across the UK.
As an independent charity the UK Youth Parliament has the endorsement of the three party leaders.
The UK Youth Parliament is more representative than its adult counterpart: 52% of MYPs are female – compared to 18% in the House of Commons, 20% of MYPs are from Black or ethnic minority backgrounds – compared to 2% in the House of Commons and 7.8% in the overall population and 4% of MYPs have a disability.
The UK Youth Parliament ensures young people have a voice on issues that affect them as laid out in Article 12 of UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is a non-partisan organisation, which does not represent a particular party-political point of view and is solely issue-based.