Sarah and Miriam, Reading Activists volunteers from Gateshead, talk about last Summer's riots in this video and here's what Miriam had to say:

I am writing this to help dispel the view that all young people are bad. I'm Miriam and I'm part of the Reading Activists Young People's Steering Group in Gateshead.

The recent media coverage of the riots in the south and elsewhere would appear to suggest that discontented young people are happy to cause havoc and mayhem, with disregard to their own communities and their future prospects.

The North East has not followed the crowd and our young people are not carelessly destroying the community that they live in, instead many of them are taking part in it and encouraging inclusion not exclusion. This is shown by the local Reading Activists young people's voluntary group based at Gateshead Central Library that is preparing events that will benefit the local community and change young people's perceptions of the library.

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