This year's Weyburn Youth Council was introduced at last night's regular meeting of Weyburn City Council.

Youth Council encourages youth to participate in the community, engages leaders and volunteers of the future, and provides a mechanism for the youth of the community to communicate with City staff and City Council.

"They provide us a lot of feedback on issues that are important to youth, for sure, but also on issues that are important to everybody in the community, and although Youth Council doesn't vote at Council, their voice is very respected by us as Council, so we want their input and their opinion," Councillor Jeff Richards said during the meeting.

Richards then introduced the new Youth Council members, including Youth Mayor Megan Ebels, Secretary Maya Knipfel, Jaylynn Haupstein, Greg Wiens and Fatima Mir. They held their first meeting of this year on October 17th.

Youth Mayor Megan Ebels shared some of her personal goals for this year.

"I'm hoping to continue with all my leadership skills," she said. "I also co-chair at the Weyburn Comp on our Student Representative Council and I'm working with our Entrepreneurship 30 class, so I'm hoping to learn new skills with that as well, and apply to university."

Ebels said she hopes to go into the sciences.

"Some of our goals for Youth Council this year are to engage with youth on local issues happening in Weyburn, and things that are important to the youth, and as well, we're hoping to host an event to encourage participation of everyone in the community," said Ebels.

Weyburn is one of only a few cities in the province to have a Youth Council.