New Resource: Selected international good practices in youth participation at the local level

I just posted a new resource on the Leading Now website. It's a list of sixteen local youth participation projects in Switzerland, Finland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and France. The document was published by the International Youth Service of the Federal Republic of Germany. It's a good sampling of the variety of ways localities can engage youth. The document also provides some brief context on some of these initiatives that might be helpful to others seeking to support youth participation.

Of course, it helps that in each of these countries there has been state-level support for youth participation. In the case of Finland and the Netherlands, in fact, youth participation is required by law. And since all five nations have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, they are bound to support child and youth participation. Alas, the United States is one of only two nations in the world (the other is Somalia) that have not ratified the UNCRC.

Here's a link to the document, called Selected international good practices in youth participation at the local level. You might also want to check out some of the many other resources on the Leading Now website, including case studies, research and tool kits.

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.

Student voice reading list

Involver has a great list up today of research on student voice. It's very U.K.-centric, but still a great resource to anyone interested in the topic.

Student voice reading list

Leeds City Museum receives award for youth participation

Much of the emphasis in youth participation work is on providing opportunities for young people to contribute to decisions about social services. Here's a great example of youth participation in the context of a cultural facility in Leeds, United Kingdom.

The Leeds City Museum was recently awarded the first-ever Hear By Right Bronze Award from the National Youth Agency. The Hear by Right Award was established in 2010 to recognize organizations that take youth participation seriously and highlight the contributions of the young people they work with.

The Leeds City Museum worked with The Youth Association (TYA) to meaningfully involve young people in assessing the museum and making recommendations. TYA also helped to facilitate a workshop between the young people and the museum's management to embed participation into the culture of the museum. The museum established a steering group of young people from all ages and backgrounds, called "the Preservative Party." Members attend the museum as "mystery shoppers" and provide input into strategic planning decisions.

"Embedding youth participation into the development of museums is vital to ensure they are relevant to young people," said Fiona Blacke, National Youth Agency chief executive.

Update: Forgot the link! 
Award Proves Youth Participation is More Than Just Talk for Leeds City Museum

Providing opportunities for youth to participate in democracy

This piece was published as a guest commentary in today's Denver Post, under the title "Getting our youth to participate in democracy." Here's a link to the commentary. 

How do Americans learn to participate in democracy? If you answered “civics class” you get partial credit.

Most school districts, including DPS [Denver Public Schools], require one semester of civics for graduation. Students learn about the structure and functions of government and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. But a recent report from the Carnegie Corporation, which funded the Colorado Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools between 2005-2007, indicates that because of increasing demands for accountability focused mainly on math and literacy, students have few opportunities to develop and practice civic skills such as identifying a problem, gathering evidence, reviewing and debating possible strategies and collaborating on solutions. They almost never learn the critical skill of budgeting.

Young people living in disadvantaged communities with lots of problems to solve have the most to gain by learning such skills. But if their schools can’t provide opportunities to acquire those skills, what other options do they have?

The school I'd like

The Guardian in the U.K. is running a series called "The School I'd Like," which asked British students for their ideas about how to make school better. Most of the students who responded are in the primary grades, and much of what they want is pie-in-the-sky, but there are also some thoughtful, sensible suggestions. Many of the suggestions reflect children's understandable frustration at being treated like, well, children. Joshua Kennedy, age 11, wrote:

"The children of the modern day are getting more and more rights such as having the right to say their opinion, and this is mine....[Y]ou should be allowed to say what you think to the teacher without being criticised or given a detention."

There is some evidence that schools are encouraging more participation, and that students are being heard. According to Hannah Scott, age 10,

"They do ask what we'd like sometimes. When we were getting a new teacher, we had a lesson from three teachers and we were asked which one we liked the best. They did choose her, so they listened to us."

The Guardian worked with a panel of ten children to develop a manifesto based on the submissions they received. The Guardian will share the manifesto with opinion leaders and ask for their feedback.

You can find the whole series, including an introduction to the panel and the 2011 manifesto, as well as the manifesto from a similar project conducted ten years ago, here.

New report on young people's participation in planning and urban regeneration

Ecorys, a U.K. research firm, in collaboration with the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University, have just published a report documenting their study of existing research on youth participation in planning and urban regeneration in the U.K. The authors examined a range of participation practices and determined that the most successful practices had a number of factors in common:

1. Official recognition of children’s fundamental rights;
2. Broad-based and inclusive partnerships;
3. Political and cultural sensitivity;
4. "Child-friendly" planning processes and structures;
5. Support from skilled intermediaries;
6. A range of participation methods;
7. Understanding participation as a process of learning and change;
8. Openness and reciprocal learning between children and adults;
9. An incremental and realistic approach;
10. Visibility in the results; and
11. Embedding at different levels and spatial scales.

BYC establishes Local Councillor Shadowing Award

The British Youth Council has established a new program that allows young people to acquire credit that can be used for educational or job skills certification by shadowing a local councilor for ten hours. The BYC provides a handbook to local authorities that explains how the program works and includes activities that might be of interest to both the councilor and the young person. The handbook explains how to log the young person's activities to ensure s/he receives credit, and includes advice on recruitment of young people and working with the media.

The BYC also provides a log book for young people to track their activities and learning. The log book explains the program and includes sample activities, a partnership agreement, exercises and reflection activities that the young person can complete to help him/her get the most out of the shadowing experience.

This award program is a great way to help local officials connect to young people in their community (that could easily be replicated elsewhere), and it provides an opportunity for young people to learn a great deal about how local government works that would be difficult to learn in a classroom setting.

For more information and to download the handbook and log book, visit the BYC page: Local Councillor Shadowing Award.

New guide for local councilors on engaging youth

Local Government Improvement and Development, which supports improvement and innovation among local governments in the United Kingdom, has published a new guide to help local officials engage young people. The guide includes challenges to consider, case studies from around the country and examples of best practice for listening to young people. The document includes questions and activities to help councilors reflect on their own practice and experience and consider how best to engage young people in their work.

Engaging young people: Local Leadership Councillor workbook

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!

"My City Too" seminar on localism, youth and the built environment

The British coalition government is working to get its Localism Bill through Parliament. Among other things, the bill would place responsibility for decisions about planning and the built environment with local authorities and communities. Open-City is hosting a seminar on youth participation and localism at London's Royal College of Physicians on March 23. Young Ambassadors from Open-City's My City Too program and local authority representatives will outline proposals to get young people involved in the localism agenda in their communities and neighborhoods.

The My City Too campaign prepares young Londoners aged 12-19 to participate in decisions about the future of their neighborhoods, boroughs and city through action research projects, monthly forums, intergenerational workshops with city planners, surveys, and even a forum for mayoral candidates in 2008.

For more information about the seminar, see Localism, Youth and the Built Environment: an Open-City knowledge-sharing seminar.

Budget cuts affecting youth participation in the U.K.

The chief executive and five other full-time staff have left the U.K. Youth Parliament since December due to pending reductions in government funding, according to Children & Young People Now. The CYPN article indicates that the British Youth Council (BYC) is also expecting cuts and is seeking new sources of funding. There have apparently been informal talks of merging the two organizations or working more closely to cut costs, but no formal merger proposal has been announced. The BYC recently entered into a partnership with Young Advisors.

The BYC is currently seeking funding from private and corporate sources and is seeking to expand consulting and training services in the U.K. and abroad to generate more revenue.

The proposed cuts in funding for youth participation are part of a broader set of reductions in funding being considered by the U.K. government. An inquiry into services for children is currently being held by the Education Committee in Parliament.

Cuts in funding at the local level are also affecting youth participation, as described in this article from Richmond, where the participation officer was one of 170 people let go by the local authority.

British House of Lords debates voting rights for 16- and 17-year olds

On December 13 the British House of Lords debated an amendment that would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in an upcoming referendum on electoral reform in the United Kingdom. The amendment was offered to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, and although it addressed participation in the referendum only, the debate included discussion of extending voting rights in general for this age group. This debate followed another in October during which over 200 MPs voted in favor of extending the right to vote to 16- and 17-year-olds.

Although the amendment was ultimately withdrawn, the debate demonstrated that there is significant support in Parliament for extending the franchise to younger citizens. Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town, who introduced the amendment, opened debate by arguing that the lack of voting rights for 16- and 17-year-olds amounts to taxation without representation. The Baroness cited the support of the U.K. Youth Parliament, the Electoral Reform Society and the POWER Inquiry (an independent inquiry established in 2004 to find ways to deepen political participation) for lowering the voting age. According to Baroness Hayter, "there is general support for voting at 16. The objections that were thrown up were practical ones rather than issues of principle. The real issue is that nearly everyone supports the idea of voting at 16."

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.

Youth Participation Digest for October 29, 2009

My posts have been somewhat infrequent recently, but youth participation does not stop! So rather than a post about a single event or opportunity, here's a digest of recent youth participation-related articles and posts I have come across.

Opportunities

Community development funding available for young leaders

Young Canadians interested in community development have an opportunity to receive up to $1,500 in funding to plan and carry out a community project. Grants are provided by the Society of Educational Visits and Exchanges Canada and the Department of Canadian Heritage. Projects must be youth-led and associated with a town/municipal council. The application deadline is Nov. 19.

Youth participation - growing up?
The Children's Services Network, a program of the Local Government Information Unit (LGiU), will hold a seminar on youth participation in London on December 12. The session will examine the extent to which existing youth participation programs and policies are effective, for both young people and local authorities. The session will conclude with a reception at "Youth participation - growing up?," a report written by the LGiU's youth advocate, will be released.

News

Rt. Honorable Speaker addresses the 121st IPU Assembly
Nepal's Speaker of the Legislative Parliament and its Chief Whip of the Nepali Congress addressed the 121st Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Geneva on October 22. The Chief Whip, Hon. Laxman Prasad Ghimire, told the Assembly, “Though youth participation in political and democratic process has increased in quantitative terms, they still lag behind in influencing the core decision making process of the national as well as the international polity.” Mr. Ghimire stressed that “only through acceptance of youth as a critical stakeholders and ensuring their meaningful participation in sustaining the democratic process can institutionalize democracy." Mr. Ghimire called for the formation of Youth Parliamentarians Caucuses in member Parliaments and a Caucus of Youth Parliamentarians in the IPU.

Nigeria: Vision 2020 - Integrating Youth Concerns Into Development Agenda
The Nigerian Ministry of Youth Development recently held a workshop in Lagos on youth mainstreaming for government youth development officers, teachers, journalists, representatives of civil society organizations and other stakeholders. Youth mainstreaming is the process of involving young people in the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of policies and programs that affect them. The aim of this workshop was to support integration of young people into national and economic development planning.

We're Building a Global Movement
This post from the It's Getting Hot In Here blog describes some recent successes of the international youth climate movement. One example is the recent establishment of YOUNGOs, or youth non-governmental organizations, as a recognized observer constituency within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This will facilitate communication between youth NGOs and the UN secretariat.

Youth and internet policy in the EU

An organization called HUWY (which I think stands for "Hub Websites for Youth") is seeking to engage European youth in internet policymaking through a pilot project sponsored by the European Commission and based in the UK, Ireland, Estonia and Germany. HUWY provides resources through an EU hub, as well as national hubs and online space for young people to discuss important internet-related issues (e.g., cyber-bullying, file sharing, ID theft, etc.). The idea is that after discussing the issues in whatever ways young people are comfortable with, they will then bring their ideas back to the hubs, and those ideas will be shared by HUWY with national and EU policymakers.

Below is a diagram of the project:


For more information visit HUWY.

U.K. Youth Parliament summit wraps up

Hundreds of young people from across the country today wrapped up a 4-day summit, sponsored by the UK Youth Parliament (UKYP), at the University of Kent, in Canturbury. Summit participants and members of the Youth Parliament launched national campaigns on public transportation, university tuition and political education. Participants also discussed mental health issues, education, youth participation and crime, and heard from speakers including the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, and Wes Streeting, president of the National Union of Students. Participants also had the opportunity to ask questions and discuss important issues with other public officials.

The UKYP provides opportunities for 11-18-year-olds to use their voice in creative ways to bring about social change. The UKYP was launched at the House of Commons in July 1999, and held its first Sitting in February 2001 in London. There are currently over 500 elected MYPs (Members of Youth Parliament) and Deputy MYPs.

Kent hosts national UK Youth Parliament summit

New text on children and young people's participation

There's a new book out from Routledge called A Handbook of Children and Young People's Participation: Perspectives from Theory and Practice, by Barry Percy-Smith and Nigel Thomas. It's 400 pages and aimed at both scholars and practioners.

From the flyer:

Promoting the participation of children and young people--in decision-making and policy development, and as active contributors to everyday family and community life--has become a central part of policy and programme initiatives in both majority and minority worlds.

This book presents the most useful recent work in children’s participation as a resource for academics, students and practitioners in childhood studies, children’s rights and welfare, child and family social work, youth and community work, governance, aid and development programmes.

The book introduces key concepts and debates, and presents a rich collection of accounts of the diverse ways in which children’s participation is understood and enacted around the world, interspersed with reflective commentaries from adults and young people. It concludes with a number of substantial theoretical contributions that aim to take forward our understanding of children’s participation.

Some sample chapters:

• Challenges of participatory practice
• Armed conflict and post conflict peace building
• Participation of children in the most difficult situations
• Children’s participation in law reform in South Africa
• Disabled children and participation in the UK
• Participation among young people with mental health issue
• The construction of childhood and the socialisation of children in Ghana
• Youth participation in indigenous traditional communities
• Children’s participation in school and the local community
• Getting the measure of children and young people’s participation
• Challenging obstacles to the participation of children and young people in Rwanda
• Child reporters as agents of change
• Children’s participation in citizenship and governance
• The effectiveness of Youth Councils in Scotland
• Critiquing youth parliaments as models of representation for marginalised young people
• Children and deliberative democracy
• Governance and participation

Barry Percy-Smith is Reader in Childhood and Participatory Practice at the SOLAR Action Research Centre, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK.

Nigel Thomas is Professor of Childhood and Youth Research at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, and Co-Director of The Centre, which promotes and conducts research on children and young people’s participation.

A Handbook of Children and Young People's Participation will be available August 14, 2009.

British Youth Council and Young UK Ambassadors

The British Youth Council was established in 1948 by the British Foreign Office in preparation for the World Assembly on Youth. Its original purpose was to unite young people in Britain against Communism.

Today the BYC works to support youth voice; it does so by training young people, consulting and leading campaigns on issues important to young people. One of the BYC's current campaigns, for example, is aimed at lowering the voting age to 16.

BYC trainers help organizations engage young people in leadership and prepare young people to participate in the governance of these organizations. One program, called "Youth4U - Young Inspectors," helps youth in disadvantaged communities influence the delivery of services in their communities.

Another new BYC initiative is the Young UK Ambassadors program, a partnership between the youth participation networks of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. The Young UK Ambassadors are a team of 15 youth who will represent the UK at international events.

The BYC website also includes a resource center, a calendar of events and a jobs section.

British Youth Council
Young UK Ambassadors