Why We Should Be Engaging Youth in Our Communities
Engaging youth in our communities is more critical than ever as a broader range of issues begin to affect the lives of young people. For any society to become genuinely welcoming and vibrant and for youth to reach their full potential, young people must be able to commit to, participate in and influence their communities.
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Learn About Why to Engage Youth in Our Communities
Engaging youth helps to:
- Acknowledge young people as co-builders of society.
- Encourage young people to express themselves.
- Support young people's leadership development.
Young people appreciate and thrive on the opportunity to integrate and participate in the communities they live, work, and socialize in. They are looking for opportunities to contribute in their own way, with their strengths, opinions, and view of the community.
Furthermore, youth engagement allows young people:
- To grow by living positive, fulfilling, and instructive experiences, giving meaning to life.
- To model their identity by mixing with significant adults and peers: a winning combination for their development.
- To contribute to their environment and community.
- To encourage their engagement in projects where they have a say instead of those where they just fulfill everybody else's agenda.
- To develop their leadership and sense of responsibility.
- To better understand how communities are built and organized and the decisions that govern them.
- To change perceptions.
- To build on successes.
7 Driving Forces Behind Youth Engagement
The Boscoville 2000 Young people Mobilization and Citizen Participation Management group has created a resource outlining the 7 driving forces behind youth engagement which are:
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To Have a Vision:
The more young people adhere to a vision or believe in what they are doing, this passion compels them to engage in it. However, for this engagement to become concrete, their vision needs to be supported through the development of a project or a community's belief - where they feel important.
To Feel Competent:
The more young people are given the opportunity to make the most of their skills and feel competent, the more they will commit. As a result, communities are working more and more with their own resources, strengths, and preferences because each individual's best chances of development are in the domains in which they have the best skill set.
To Have Responsibilities:
The more youth are aware of their responsibilities and have clear roles, the more they will commit. They need opportunities to engage as citizens and to increase their awareness of responsibility through discussions and debates within their communities, the projects they lead, and the structures and influential spaces they occupy.
To Be Recognized:
The more young people feel recognized for their contributions, the more they commit. There are several ways to manifest this recognition: supportive words like feedback and concrete gestures such as setting up meeting times adapted to their schedule.
To Have Influence:
The more adults allow youth to play a truly influential role and to make decisions, the more they commit. This involves identifying opportunities for youth to share the power and be associated with the decision-making process and see how this sharing can be actualized.
To Be Supported:
The more young people are supported by the community and have access to the necessary resources (human, financial, and material), the more they commit. When young people have opportunities to play an influential role in the communities, the support of influential people is often key to their success.
To Be Creative:
The more communities encourage the emergence of creativity; the more young people will commit. Indeed youth are often more open, less rigid, and much more creative than adults. Their presence, energy, advice, and ideas can quickly improve a community. Learning to work with young people opens new horizons that are very different from the usual ways of doing things; it prepares us for the future with more self-confidence and humility.
Their research found that young people are more committed when these seven forces are present, maximizing their participation. Conversely, when some of these elements are missing, youth engagement is more difficult, and the results are less conclusive.
Learn More:
ETR's YEN (Youth Engagement Network) has partnered with organizations that value youth engagement and share their resources for your organization to tap into. The Youth Within Our Communities guide is intended for communities and organizations that would sincerely like to integrate young people ages 12 to 25 within their communities by allowing them to actively participate in decisions affecting them and allowing them to play a more influential role.
You can download the complete guide at https://www.etr.org/index.cfm/_api/render/file/?method=inline&fileID=046095E3-32FC-4FA1-831F1D2442FCBF91.
For more resources to support youth engagement, scroll through YEN's complete list of PDFs at https://www.etr.org/yen/resources/youth-engagement.
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