Young people in Grangetown joined a project by Cardiff University, saying what they would do

to help improve their locality. Some of the ideas were green pedestrian signals should shine
longer, and more street lighting. For 12-year-old Yahya, he wants to clean littered crisp packets
and plastic bags while 13-year-old Moneab wants more crossing time at busy crossroads. These
young people from eight to 18 years old work with local schools and the area's youth forum for a
safer, cleaner, and friendly community, more playing ground, and greener Grangetown. The
leader of the project, Dr. Matluba Khan feeds it into a recovery plan after Covid because he
thinks young people are mentally affected by Covid. Young people were given a small budget to
do so they must decide on some potential changes. However, they still bring a lot of ideas like
more features in green parks and improved the quality of road surfaces and pavements. Outside
that, The Cardiff University research, Play Wales, and major of parents conclude the ability to
play helps children in mental health and growing up.

It is very interesting to know how young people help improve their locality in Grangetown.
Usually, young people's opinions are ignored in local construction, most infrastructure is built to
serve adults, not children. But through this project, we can see that young people's opinions
shouldn’t be ignored because they are very useful. That's because children have more time to
observe, explore and play, so they often discover things that adults often don't notice. This
project is very interesting and has potential, but it also has some bad points. The first thing to
notice is that the whole project is done by a lot of young people with a lot of different ideas. It
makes the project cluttered with lots of ideas but a lot of them won't come true because of the
limited budget. It would be better if ideas were filtered by the school first, then Cardiff
University, then the community and city council will vote on the most useful ideal. By the way,
this project can help to improve children's thinking and development and shows that adult
interest in children's development and play has increased, which is a good thing for the
community.