Ten Tips for Involving Young People in Meetings

September 24th, 2007 by mas | Filed under Courses & Events, Participation & Citizenship.

young people meeting A lot of organisations contact us wanting advice or training to involve young people in meetings or adult committees. Generally this leads to an in-depth conversation about how they should be looking to do a fair bit of preparatory work to get to this stage - however the reality is that many organisations still ‘involve young people’ by plonking a couple on a committee and hoping they’ll contribute ever so now and again (or at least not make too much mess!).

Cynicism aside even organisations with a genuine desire for young people to participate sometimes find themselves in the position of holding an ‘adult’ meeting with some young people who haven’t been well prepared. So what can you do when in this situation to make the meeting process more relevant and interesting and hopefully even get some input from the young people?!

Meetings should be interesting for everyone
Make sure the people who are there should be there
Young People should be involved in their own right
Appoint a Chairperson (a good one!)
Check the agenda is relevant
Explain the decision making format
Speak normally & explain jargon
Treat it as a meeting not a youth centre
Make it a dynamic meeting
Adults have needs too!

1. Meetings should be interesting for everyone
So you’re concerned that young people will be bored at your meeting? What makes you think everyone else isn’t bored with them too?! Running interesting meetings should be the norm - that way everyone attending them is more likely to be enthusiastic about doing so and if you’re enthusiastic about it, its going to be a lot easier to persuade some young people to get involved.

2. Make sure the people who are there should be there
Having drummed up some enthusiasm for your meetings and got some young people interested in being involved, you now need to check that the young people are actually appropriate. Ask yourself why are these young people going to attend this meeting? What skills, experience or knowledge do they bring thats relevant? What is their motivation? If the answers to these questions include things like ‘well they’re young’ or ‘they’ll get a certificate’ then you need to stop right there because you have a very long way to go before you’re anywhere near ready to involve young people on your committee. Its very important to treat this seriously because if you don’t any involvement is very likely to be tokenistic and short lived - its much better to spend some time working out what relevance there is to what you do to young people and then seeking out the young people its relevant too, than wasting time with some disinterested or confused young people in the corner of the room.

3. Young People should be involved in their own right
This relates to number 2. Involving appropriate young people who have a genuine interest in what you do will clearly make for a stronger involvement. Something related to this that needs careful consideration is the use or role of ’supporting youth workers’. Many committees use an adult ‘youth spokesperson’ or someone that ‘deals with the young people’ to support young people in meetings. The thinking behind this is to help build the confidence of young people to attend and contribute. Personally I think that very often this kind of role is very limiting. What tends to happen is the ‘adult spokesperson’ does most or all of the talking, making it harder, not easier for young people to contribute. It would be a much better use of time to do some teambuilding to help young people and adults build relationships (there are a range of ideas for this in the ‘A Practical Approach to Youth Participation book’).

4. Appoint a Chairperson (a good one!)
Many misunderstand the role of the chairperson. The role of the ‘chair’ is to ensure that a good meeting is held and that the group make the best decisions. This means someone who is aware of the process of actually having the meeting. A good chair will be aware of when discussions are too confrontational, too boring, or too meaningless. They will keep members on track and on time. They will also be aware of how people feel - do people have something to say but are too afraid? Is the format of the meeting making some people uncomfortable? Are some members being unfair on others or too dominating? There are a series of tips related to this in the free downloadable guide that goes with the DISCussion resource.

5. Check the agenda is relevant
Normally this should be done prior to the meeting and all members attending should have had an opportunity to add to and suggest changes to the agenda. In real life this isn’t always the case and in anycase its always useful to clarify the agenda at the start of the meeting. At this point check that the items on the agenda are relevant to everyone attending - if some of them are not maybe they should be discussed at a subcommittee with a summary brought to this group? This is also a good time to check with young people for their understanding of the different agenda items and what relevance they have to them.

6. Explain the decision making format
Don’t assume everyone knows this - actually do you?! Many committees have never actually discussed this and its just assumed that at some point there may be a vote about something. This is ineffective and often unfair. If you do use voting when is a vote called? Who is entitled to vote and how many votes do they have? Is voting appropriate to the decision being made or is there another form of decision making to be used (check if this is allowed in your constitution!).

7. Speak normally & explain jargon
Probably the number 1 thing you hear when discussing involving young people in adult structures - is don’t use jargon. Well I disagree! Jargon is useful and thats why it exists - the problem with it, is that unless people understand the jargon it alienates them. So the key here is making sure everyone (not just young people) understand what is meant and this doesn’t just include jargon it includes all words. Its not unusual for older people to use words that younger people don’t understand and vice versa. A good chairperson will be aware of these things and will ask people using unusual words or jargon terms to clarify what they are saying. The simple approach to this is to try and speak ‘normally’ - not how you normally speak! But in a way the average person would be able to understand what you mean.

8. Treat it as a meeting not a youth centre
Just because you’re involving young people doesn’t mean you need to try and go all ‘cool’. Playing loud hiphop music with a table in the local park isn’t going to help you have an effective meeting. Young people don’t need you to make grand gestures - what they will want is the same as other participants - to feel they’ve had the chance to contribute and to feel their contribution was valued - this comes from an effective meeting not being ‘down with the kids’!

9. Make it a dynamic meeting
Having an effective meeting doesn’t necessarily mean sitting round a table. Going back to point number 1 - meetings should be interesting for everyone - so think about how you can make the discussion process as interesting as possible. A ‘dynamic meeting’ means changing the formats of different discussions. Get peoples input in different ways - break into smaller groups, use sticky notes and spider diagrams, get people to swap seats, have a discussion outside and without a table. Some of our meetings have lasted up to 6 hours using these techniques (and they weren’t boring!!!)

10. Adults have needs too!
Its understandable that the majority of consideration goes to how to involve the new people. But don’t forget that adults will want support and reassurance too. Many adults simply haven’t had any contact with young people since they were young themselves (besides family) and find the idea of having to talk to young people frightening. If you’ve managed to get points 2 & 3 right this will be a lot easier. Discuss things like explaining jargon and language, making the meeting process interesting for everyone and reassure existing members that the young people joining the group have a valuable contribution to make and the involvement of young people will be easier for everyone. If all this is true there should be less reasons for adult members to be anxious and also less opportunity for them to come across as patronising.

Finally if at all possible it rally is very worthwhile to allow some time to use some group development activities to break the ice right at the start of involving young people. These don’t need to be adventurous or expensive - they can be done in a small space and for free!

I’m sure at some stage I’ll write a further 10 tips because I already came up with a load more just from writing this! It is worth emphasising again though that ideally a lot of work needs to be done before trying to get young people involved on adult committees and meetings (thats a lot of work with young people and adults!). Of course in the meantime there’s no reason you can’t start making your meetings more interesting anyhow!……………