Community Crime Prevention Guide
Printable Version (PDF/1.4MB)
Develop a Community Crime Prevention Action Plan
Engage Youth
Rationale for Engaging Youth
Municipal leaders regularly make decisions, shape policies and take action on issues that directly affect youth. Think of public transport, parks and recreation, use of public spaces, health, child care, education and housing. Because young people lack access to official processes such as voting, they have few avenues for influencing decisions and policies. Youth who are disenfranchised or marginalized, including youth in care, Aboriginal youth, ethno-cultural minorities and sexually exploited youth, are even less likely to have opportunities for participation in decisions affecting their lives.
Engaging youth in decision-making processes leads to decisions that are more responsive and appropriate to youth's needs and interests. Although further research is needed to determine what is most effective in engaging youth, the evidence strongly suggests the best way to ensure success is to include youth throughout the entire design of a program. Meaningful youth participation involves recognizing and nurturing the strengths, interests and abilities of youth by providing opportunities for youth to become involved in decisions that affect them, at both individual and systemic levels.
Youth Participation in Local Governance
There is no one right way to promote or "blueprint" youth participation in governance. However, there are principles and practices that have been proven to be successful. Every city, community and organization will have different youth issues and capacities to engage youth in governance. The most successful programs are those that incorporate a variety of approaches to meet and address the diversity and complexity of the youth issues involved.
Youth councils and youth representation on boards are typically thought of in relation to youth governance. While these strategies tend to allow youth direct interaction with adult decision makers, and a greater capacity to influence planning and decision making, they generally only reach a small percentage of youths, often those who are already leaders.
Less formal structures, such as youth action teams which are peer led leadership groups, engage a larger number and broader diversity of youth.
To build the capacity of all youth to engage in governance, the best strategy is a framework that incorporates multiple levels of youth participation. It can include opportunities to engage at the neighbourhood and community level through youth action teams, as well as opportunities to engage within formal government structures, such as youth representation on boards.
Strategies for Engaging Youth in Local Governance
The McCreary Centre Society, a non-profit organization in B.C., will facilitate half-day Youth Advisory Council (YAC) workshops for youth interested in starting up or furthering a workshop. YACLink is a how-to manual for organizing youth workshops that can be downloaded from their website
.
YACLink is a combination of a written guide and peer-led workshop. It includes instructions on:
- preparing for the workshops;
- a step-by-step guide to facilitating the workshops;
- overheads and handouts; and
- an appendix of icebreaker activities.
For more information, e-mail: mccreary@mcs.bc.ca.
Resources
Youth-Activism and Participation: A Literature Review on Best Practices in Engaging Youth (PDF/97.5KB): Youth-Activism contains lists of recommended websites for youth activism, as well as recommended toolkits for youth activism. It includes checklists for adults when working with and engaging with youth to ensure best practices, along with tips for adults working with youth as partners. Other features include guidelines for program initiatives, information of characteristics required for youth work and youth development programs to be successful, and strategies and practices to employ when engaging with youth.
Indicators of Successful Youth Engagement: The Centre of Excellence for Youth Engagement brings together the expertise of youth, youth service providers, academic researchers and policy makers to identify, build and undertake models of effective practices for engaging youth in meaningful ways. The centre is committed to youth being involved, on a lead basis and with the support of adult professionals, in engaging in research and developing policies and products.
The website features an extensive resource centre and includes results from a scan of 78 youth-serving organizations from across Canada that identifies the ingredients in programs that successfully engaged youth.
The centre benefits from knowledge generated by other centres for excellence for children's well-being where the focus is on involving disengaged youth. The centre assists coalitions of police forces, community agencies and youth experiencing risk through programs such as Building Safer Communities: Youth/Adult Partnerships as Agents of Change . (PDF/91KB)
