Introduction: Moving youth participation forward

2003

FIVE YOUTH from the San Francisco Bay Area recently joined twenty-five other young people and over one hundred adults at an international conference on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. “It was the most un-youth-friendly place,” explained one young woman. “Every day we woke up early and spent hours listening to adults lecture about the experiences of youth. There was no time for us to talk to anyone, no time to move around, and when we tried to tell them about our feelings, they didn’t really listen. Nothing really changed—until the last day when we finally got to do our presentation. One of the adults tried to come up and facilitate our question-andanswer period, and we just said, ‘No, thank you. We’re prepared to do this for ourselves. Sit down please.’ I don’t think the adults really got it until then.”1

Community Development, 2014

While civic engagement provides a rich rationale for intervention, the array of discourses urging a focus on youth engagement or action means that the concept can be confusing, cluttered, and lacking consistent operationalization. From the perspective of policy makers and program managers, it can be challenging to disentangle the competing messages and assumptions about young people that underpin the rhetoric in relation to youth engagement. Using a wide range of international research, the purpose of this paper is to provide clarity regarding the key multiple concepts and issues pertinent to the concept of youth civic engagement. In particular, the paper answers the following questions: what are the definitions, typologies and discourses in which the concept of youth civic engagement operates?; and what are the putative beneficial outcomes of youth engagement identified? We also discuss some of the broader considerations on the positioning of young people in society, which impact the trajectory of civic engagement effort. As a means for reflecting on their own practices, programs and approaches, our intent is to provide those involved in the application and research of youth engagement with a more coherent roadmap of the diversity residing in this field. i We use the terms 'youth' and 'young people' interchangeably and in an inclusive sense. However, we recognize that these should not be taken-for-granted categories. The terms are far more culturally nuanced and variable, and layered with complexities of gender, sexuality, class, race and ethnicity that shape identities and life chances in critical ways (see Bucholtz 2002; Furlong and Cartmel 2006).

Handbook for Working with Children and Youth: Pathways to Resilience across Cultures and Contexts, 2005

Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning, 2016

This paper documents the opportunities and challenges experienced by youth leaders and community agency partners in our community-based research project on youth engagement. Participants provided reflective statements, based on their experiences during the course of this multi-year project. Specifically, these insights focused on (a) youth-oriented and collaborative research processes (for example highlighting youth voice-"bottom-up process for youth by youth," and colearning and team work); (b) group dynamics (for example, common purpose, dealing with transformation, relationship and trust-building, and power issues); and (c) benefits for community youth-serving agencies and youth themselves, for example, capacitybuilding, grounded in youth experiences through participatory research, and knowledge translation and practical application-advancing research into action). The process of being involved in this research was coined an "amazing journey" to facilitate positive change and transformation within the youth and community partners. Understanding such youth engagement issues has implications for better supporting high-risk youth and their families in order to enhance the quality of their lives in a meaningful, sustainable way.

2007

Journal of Youth Researches, Republic of Turkey Ministry of Youth and Sports, 2017

Youth participation constitutes an essential process for promoting access to citizenship rights and particularly in terms of community development. So far, there has been little study in terms of youth participation in different matters and dimensions. Building on the notion of youth participation and empowerment, this paper tries to argue on the importance of youth involvement in the process of decision making regarding issues that affect their life. Young people are particularly capable of engaging in decision making processes, but this ability is often denied from parents, teachers, stake-holders or other adults because they often do not consider youth as being capable enough to be able to make decisions or take responsibility. One of the main objectives of this paper is to show how such conceptualizations towards youth participation can be very frustrating or detrimental towards their individuality. The paper proposes a few recommendations in regards to youth participation especially focusing on community engagement. In addition, social awareness, education and strengthening youth /adult relationships are central in the process of overcoming the imbalance of power and promoting agency.

2006

Youth participation is a process of involving young people in the institutions and decisions that affect their lives. It includes initiatives that emphasize educational reform, juvenile justice, environmental quality, and other issues; that involve populations distinguished by class, race, gender, and other characteristics; and that operate in rural areas, small towns, suburbs, and neighborhoods of large cities in developing areas and industrial nations worldwide.

Youth Studies Australia, 2011

Youth work and non-formal learning in Europe’s education landscape A quarter of a century of EU cooperation for youth policy and practice

To understand the relevance of participation for young people today it is necessary to consider it as a phenomenon of collective significance in which individuals register their individualities, and through doing so attempt to shape the social environment in which they live. From this new perspective it is possible to better understand the specific nature of youth participation and the challenge which it presents to the institutions charged with fomenting it.