Enfield Youth Council candidate Ada Hayvaci speaks to Claire Shaw about her motivation for standing

Ada address a class during her campaign to be elected to Enfield Youth Council — Ada Hayvaci addresses a class during her campaign to be elected to Enfield Youth Council

Voting for this year’s Enfield Youth Council (EYC) election closes shortly – as dozens of candidates hope to offer a voice for young people and the issues affecting them.

A total of 20 young people aged between eleven and 17 will be elected to represent the borough once all the votes have been cast and counted by Enfield Council, with the results due to be confirmed by the end of this week.

EYC members work to champion the needs of young people across Enfield, improve local services and opportunities for young people, and positively influence policies and decisions made by councillors.

One of the 34 candidates standing for EYC this year is Ada Hayvaci, aged 16.

Ada has been a social action captain at her school for three years and regularly arranges her own fundraising projects both in school and within her local community. She is passionate about helping those in need and improving the lives of young people in the borough and beyond, saying she wants to “make sure I cater to the needs of the whole age range”.

If elected, one of Ada’s priorities will be the introduction of life skills teaching in schools. She wants to implement classes, assemblies and workshops teaching skills such as CV writing, applying for employment, writing a cover letter, how to pay bills and managing finances.

Ada has explored ways in which this can be achieved with minimal or no cost, through volunteers and older students. “I want to provide them with the resources and the people,” Ada said. “It’s actually quite surprising how many people do want to go and help in schools without being paid.”

Work experience for secondary school students is another issue Ada feels needs work. She explained that if you do not have a family member or someone you know who will host you for your work experience then it is extremely difficult and, for some, impossible to find a placement.

“Last year my school told me they want me to find a week of work experience at the end of year eleven, but I couldn’t find any because I didn’t have any connection,” Ada says. “You need to know somebody to get the work experience, and I thought that was so unfair.”

She continued: “We had a career fair at my school, and we had three lawyers come. Two of them said they were not offering work experience and the other was shocked that I asked her. It’s assumed that you will go through you parents.”

Ada intends to work with local businesses, organisations such as the NHS and tech firms among others, in order to achieve more openings for students to gain work experience.

She is aware there are staff shortages, particularly across the NHS, so aims to create programmes in collaboration with hosts to make work experience more accessible, with minimal disruption to staff that are already struggling with extreme workloads.

“Shadowing would enable companies to take on, say, 20 students at a time, because they would just be following them around. I think it’s so important that we get to try different things to see what we actually like.”

Ada has dedicated much of her time to raising money for charitable causes in recent years. She also fundraises for those struggling with financial hardship in her local community to support them with educational materials such as books – running a Valentines card stall at her school for three years which has raised several hundred pounds.

Ada is most proud of the sponsored walk she did in response to the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria in 2023, a tragedy close to her heart as she has family that were affected by the quakes. “We did it in our socks because my family and lots of other people didn’t have time to grab their shoes and stuff before they ran out of their houses.”

Ada raised £2,130 to support victims of the disaster.

Another initiative was a sponsored silence which Ada arranged at her school. The silence was for 24 hours and raised £1,030 in aid of the Uyghur Muslim people being persecuted in China. She said that, for her, fundraising is “about bringing people together and showing you can make a difference”.

For more information about Enfield Youth Council and to find out the results of this year’s election after they’re announced:
Visit youthenfield.taptub.co.uk/youth-elections

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