Steven

Hi, I am the Green Party NI spokesperson for Youth and Animal Welfare.I joined the Green Party in 2003 when I met John Barry on a peace march from Queens to the US Consulate. I was looking for a way to become politically active without having to compromise my ideals of social justice, animal welfare, and of course environmentalism. The Green Party for me embodied all these concerns, and John Barry showed it was a party unafraid of a little non violent direct action. Since then I have helped the party campaign in various elections including 2005's council elections where we gained our first three councillors. I was voted onto the executive at our AGM in 2004, the youngest member of the executive until recently (we're a young party in every sense. Our youngest Exec. member is 19). I served for a year and then took a year out to study. At our AGM in December I was voted back onto the Executive and was subsequently nominated to stand in East Belfast in the 2007 Assembly elections.I received 1054 votes, after tranfers (657 1st preferences). This was in area where we had never stood previously, and it was also my first time as a candidate. In the 2003 Assembly elections, our highest vote was approximately 750 1st preferences. Brian Wilson received 2839 1st preferences in 2007 and was elected as MLA. This shows how fast are party is growing.I grew up in Ballybeen Estate, and moved to the Lisburn Road when I went to study at Queen's University. I return frequently to Ballybeen as my family still live there.I am determined to see an improvement in the conditions for the people of East Belfast who have suffered in the past from poor political representation and at the hands of Loyalist criminality.I am a Support Worker with a homeless charity. I recognise the need for increased social housing and an end to the sell off of public housing stock to the private sector.I also am a Community Volunteer Trainer in the field of drugs and alcohol and recognise the problems addiction causes in our society, and the need for our society to provide recreational spaces that are not centred around alcohol. Think of all the places you go to socialise. How many of them don't have a bar?For youth I think there are big challenges with the affordability and quality of further education, the lack of understanding amongst employers of what the different qualifications mean and their value, and no affordable housing whatsoever. I also think that the voting age should be lowered to 16.The main animal welfare issue that needs to be addressed is the extension of the hunting ban to Northern Ireland, and indeed Ireland as a whole. But we also need to look at banning the imports of foie gras (it's production is illegal here, but it can still be sold), and a phase out of cosmetics tested on animals (again testing cosmetics on animals is prohibited but sale of products using animal tested ingredients is not).I edited my profile with Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.4