Last Tuesday was International Youth Day! We are keen to work with young people more in our organisation – but so is everyone else it seems.
So why do we think this is important?
Like everyone else, young people have a mix of beliefs, experiences and backgrounds, so why do we care so much about their opinions? There are the well known reasons:
“The youth are the future”
“Young people have fresh ideas”
But we’d like to dig a little deeper into these in relation to our work.
Across our services, we’ve worked with young people to develop our research (like our Community Insight Profiles), and so inform our projects. We’ve supported several youth specific projects such as youth councils or nature engagement. However, we’ve also worked with many organisations who are currently not working with young people but would like to, either to bring in different perspectives or build a volunteer base. Many organisations like village halls, parish councils, and community action groups in Oxfordshire are worried about their sustainability, and are keen to involve young people for longer term resilience and continuity.
From what we’ve seen, as well as sharing useful insights and concrete solutions based on their own experiences, young people also often bring ideas to make organisations more inclusive and accessible to different communities. As people who tend to be less institutionalised and more observant, they can have useful inputs.
We also want to ask what giving young people ‘a voice’ actually means? From the young people we’ve spoken to, although a lot of people are asking their opinions, they rarely feel heard.
“Teenagers get put down. We want to be taken seriously, like adults.”
“The school councillors came to talk about what we wanted in the playground but nothing has happened yet.”
“The government couldn’t care less. There are so many ideas for global warming and the Low Traffic Neighbourhood but they don’t listen to us.”
Why is this?
- Are they being ignored or is the impact of their voice not communicated back to them?
- What expectations do organisations have of young people and vice versa?
- Are we tailoring the ways we engage and communicate with young people?
- Are we ‘othering’ young people?
Here’s a ‘hot take’ from a young person in our organisation:
“It would be nice for the opinions of young people to be treated equally to that of older people. Not as gold dust and not ignored, just recognised as insightful and maybe useful.
We’re told that our generation is facing the worst challenges socially, politically, environmentally (not sure I’m convinced, but then again not been alive that long), and that it’s up to us to change it. That puts a lot of pressure on us, makes some of us feel disempowered and disillusioned (though it can be powerful too), and separates young people from everyone else. It makes us blame the older generation, copying the news headlines.
But as my friend asked me: who does it serve to divide generations?
We have lots of expectations of each other, with older people often patronising younger people whilst younger people judge older people harshly. If we could just have a conversation about issues we both care about – the environment, housing, technology – and both be listened to, we might get further.
I’m part of several youth led organisations, and we’re constantly emailed and asked for our opinions or engagement. The organisations that have been successful with us use a different approach. It’s great that Community First is working to develop strategies and resources to work with young people”
We hope that our work at Community First Oxfordshire genuinely embeds the ideas of younger people, and we’re working to put together a strategy and some resources to better do this across our organisation, and across Oxfordshire more widely. We’re lucky to have Lisa on our team, who has worked with a few organisations using creative strategy to bring young people into their work, and supported youth councils. Keep an eye out for more updates.