Research Report into Training for Young Peoples Community Involvement

February 5th, 2008 by mas | Filed under Courses & Events, Education & Skills, Participation & Citizenship.

The final version of the independent research report undertaken on the Young Movers programme is now available (copy attached at the bottom). I wrote a brief history of the Young Movers programme in a blog a few days ago.

The research was undertaken by the Institute of Political and Economical Governance and is in two parts - an overall report and a more focussed report on the Apprentice Trainer programme that trained up the young people who delivered the training on courses. YoMo evolved from the Young Movers programme and many of the young people that were Apprentice Trainers are still involved with us.

I’ve picked out some of the bits that I think are particularly interesting. Firstly that young people are willing to participate in their communities…..

“There was a willingness to get involved with community problems, just under nine in ten said they would like to be more
involved”

However they do view adults as a barrier to their potential participation:

“This included a lack of recognition of young volunteers, and a lack of opportunities to get involved locally. They also pointed to hostility and criticism of young people from adults. They felt that adults do not take young people’s views seriously, and did not genuinely listen. This was seen as a de-motivator for youth involvement, offering mixed messages to young people.”

And yet this is despite that young people feel that adults would like them to participate:

“Two thirds of the young people came to Young Movers already thinking that most or some adults wanted young people to be more involved.”

A thumbs up for our style of training here…..

“Initially Young Movers felt that their views were taken less seriously than adults. They were optimistic about their abilities to create neighbourhood change through their own efforts, and the vast majority would have liked more say over things that happened in the places where they lived.

Over the period of their Young Movers involvement, the young peoples’ views had shifted heavily
towards more positive perception that young people did have a say over decisions made by others
affecting their neighbourhoods.”

and here:

“For the subset of Young Movers who had done projects, not only did they feel more listened to, and that they had more input over decisions, but they also felt much more confident about their own ability to make a difference directly through their own actions”

And some reference to what are the motivating factors for young people to participate:

“In their own judgement, the biggest influences on the attendees’ community involvement were youth workers, the opportunity to be involved in projects and family. The influence of friends was also important in over half the cases. Of the other options, teachers, citizenship lessons in schools and ‘settling down’ were cited by about a third of the respondents. The least important influences included national youth organisations, politicians and TV campaigns.”

I’ll do a separate post on the Apprentice Trainer programme because its so central to what we do, but it is interesting to see the negative and positive aspects of young people leading training.

Negative

“You see adults try to take over groups, some trainers come here and prepare everything before they

come without even listening to us first”

“The young people in the groups are on the same wavelength and the leaders support it most of the
time – but some don’t like it. Then, it is harder to make the group work but you just keep trying and
eventually win them over.”

“If youth workers don’t get involved then young people won’t, so we need to persuade them.”

“It’s usually adults who get a bit funny with us because we’re younger.”

“Some people think we’re unprofessional, they think we’re still young, think we’re immature.”

“Young people teaching other [adults] can be [seen as] patronizing. How can [adults] take advice from
someone with less experience? But it’s nice to see someone else’s point of view from different
experience. You can have really domineering youth workers. Some of them like to hear from youth.”
benefits

Positive

A lot say they want to do what we’re doing so I think that speaks volumes that they want to

be like us

People think if other young people can do this, so can I. Also, if adults are teaching them it’s

just like school.

Young people don’t always like to be told what to do by adults – feel like they are back at

school

Young people like to listen to other young people, we have the same outlook

If young people are teaching young people it shows that one day you’ll be able to teach others,

including adults.

A lot of adults think kids are there to mess about but we’ve got things to tell also…and

experiences. It’s so much easier than dictating it to people, people don’t listen. They turn off.

You can tell we can help because we’ve done it.

I think it’s a good thing as young people can get on with each other and build up friendships. I

think it’s easier as you’re not getting bossed around so much; you can relate to them.

Pay more attention, young people think of adults as just teachers

Important as people are on the same wavelength.

Older people can seem more authoritative and intimidate young people sometimes

Youth workers can get too involved and take over

Young people listen to other young people more – adults can sometimes drone on.

There’s a lot more stuff in the report and I think its well worth a read for anyone interested in supporting young peoples participation in community involvement. Hopefully its also useful towards the campaign for a Positive Youth Development approach.

Download the full report