YOUTH council member Roberta Horrocks has been awarded a Diana Award for her outstanding contribution to society.
Year 11 student, Roberta, has been attending The Zone in Rawtenstall for just over a year.
She said: “I like going to The Zone, it is fun and I like the media room where you can blast music. It is a good safe place to hang out.”
Through her involvement in the Youth Council, she has been getting feedback from students in school to feed into a major national consultation.
Make Your Mark is the largest youth consultation exercise and participants are asked to rate which of 10 issues the council should be encouraging the authorities to address.
Subjects range from knife crime to support for youth services, equal pay for equal work to tackling homelessness.
Roberta said: “The members of the Youth Council are collecting the opinions of people in their schools and we will be putting our findings to the national council.”
She was invited to a ceremony in Leeds when she was presented with her Diana Award and the citation read ‘for outstanding contribution to society by helping to change the lives of other young people’.
After GCSEs, Roberta wants to continue to study nursing at college and then train as a paramedic.