Guardians and Pathways

By interesting coincidence, a couple of reports relating to civic participation were released on September 15 in different parts of the world. First, a collaborative in the United Kingdom called Pathways through Participation released a report called “Pathways through Participation: What creates and sustains active citizenship?” A few hours later, as part of the 2011 National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) in Philadelphia, “Guardian of Democracy: The Civic Mission of Schools” was released by a partnership that included NCoC, The Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools and CIRCLE, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

Sefton and Knowsley Young Advisors Showcase

I recently visited Young Advisors in Manchester, U.K. I had a great time and learned a lot about Young Advisors in general and about the work done by teams in Knowsley and Sefton. Young Advisors act as paid "social action consultants," providing a variety of services designed to provide young people's perspective on issues, programs, services and events that affect them.

The work done by the Sefton and Knowsley groups includes, among many other projects, consultation and workshops for a local workforce development department on the use of social networking, providing feedback on a new curriculum in the "centers for learning" that replaced local schools, awarding funds across England to young people learning media skills, making recommendations to local councilors about how to make their meetings more interesting and accessible to young people, developing workshops for young people designed to raise awareness and understanding of mental illness, getting out the vote for the U.K. Youth Parliament, and providing young people's perspectives on "Section 30," a law that allows the police to disperse groups of more than two people--a law that many young people believe is disproportionately and unjustly applied to them.

This is an excellent model for youth participation. Take a look!

New resource from NYA: Challenge and Lead

Britain's National Youth Agency has produced a new resource for groups of young people seeking to influence and gain the support of policymakers. Challenge and Lead: A five stage plan to support leadership and challenge can help young activists identify strategies, hone their presentation skills, plan a campaign and evaluate the results.

Challenge and Lead builds on the NYA's Hear by Right standards and can be used by youth development professionals or groups of young people with some experience working together. The NYA is requesting that young people contribute case studies describing what they have accomplished using this resource.

New report on young people in governance

In October a report on young people's participation in the governance of charities and non-profits in England, called Young People in Governance, was published by the consulting firm nfpSynergy. The report's authors interviewed 15 representatives of small, medium and large charities and organizations that work with children and young people to identify the challenges to youth participation in governance and the strategies these organizations have used to address the challenges. The report includes a discussion of the most common objections to youth participation and the myths and misconceptions on which many of these objections are based, a section on the benefits of involving young people and a section on solutions to the challenges. The report also contains a table comparing practices that can lead to tokenistic involvement with corresponding practices more likely to lead to meaningful participation.

The section on challenges, myths and misconceptions will be especially helpful to those seeking to overcome resistance to engaging young people in meaningful ways.