Apologies for the crap title but hopefully a better name will emerge as this develops. Thanks for the comments in the previous posts following the weekends UKYouthOnline event. The summary of my learning from the event is that I think there needs to be more debate/consideration about using the web as a practical tool for supporting young peoples development (and also for youth practitioners to work more effectively and efficiently).

With that in mind I said that I would start getting some ideas up for planning a ‘digital youth work strategy’. I’ve already thought about how to approach this and wanted to get early thoughts up, so here goes……

The ’strategy’ itself is going to involve developing an online programme using a ‘positive development’ approach. Once I’ve laid out my own ideas I’m going to explore methods for inviting people to contribute and collaborate into the programme along the idea of creating an ‘open source digital youth service‘.
So here’s the early thinking for the strategy:

• Develop a rationale for the programme
• Develop the practical programme
• Identify relevant online tools & resources
• Develop delivery methods including consideration for supporting practitioners to use the tools
• Invite collaboration to refine the programme
• Consider evaluation methods & methods for user involvement
• Promote and publicise the programme
• Ongoing evaluation and refinement

Now some things to keep in mind:

1. The programme itself will be (more…)

   Related posts

   • What Youth Work on the Web will look like in 2009 (2)
   • What is Open Source Youth Work? (7)
   • Digital Youth Work - Appreciating the Environment (7)
   • Online Youth Work - Parental Involvement & Awareness? (2)
   • Identifying Soft Skills for the Social Innovation Camp (6)

   Tags: digital youth work, dyw, Education & Skills, Innovation & Technology, Participation & Citizenship, Resources, youth work 2.0

Picked up from over on Gallomanor - V the volunteering ’super charity’ are rebranding and launching yet another campaign adding to the huge amount of money they must have already spent on glossy campaigns.

Apparently they’ve now decided that young people don’t think volunteering so instead they’re going to call it ‘doing favours’!

um does that sound anything like Millennium Volunteers?

“right volunteering is not cool - so lets say that cool things are volunteering”

“er but some of that stuff isn’t actually volunteering - I mean they’re just playing football or baby sitting their little brother”

“no, no, those things do benefit other people so really we can count it as volunteering can’t we?!”,

“er I suppose so but doesn’t that mean we haven’t really increased volunteering we’re just calling stuff they’re already doing something different?”

“well yes but at least we can write some impressive reports and keep the funding coming in….”

OK I’m maybe being over cynical - but it hard not to over such ridiculous wastes of funding. They may be right that ‘volunteering’ isn’t cool - but rebranding, giving it a new name still isn’t going to suddenly result in surges of young people running out to volunteer. Maybe if more effort had been given to developing more rounded programmes, that funding could have helped support young people to become genuinely more community minded. But instead this simple “get them volunteering and they’ll be good citizens” won’t work - it needs a cultural shift, not fancy films and marketing.

For all the money that has been spent they might have been better just giving every young person in England a holiday job - “here you go I’ll pay you £50 for doing something nice for somebody else each Sunday this month!” At least then young people would have benefited more than all those involved with putting these campaigns together.

Related posts

• Who Influences Young People? (0)
• Young People Hanging around Shops (0)
• UN Rights of the Child Cartoons (0)
• Mullaghmatt Youth House (0)
• An Education for Xmas? (0)

Tags: campaign, Participation & Citizenship, Society & Issues

I posted up a load of these a year ago but never realised a load more were released a month later. You can see the full list of short animations about the various articles for the UN Rights of the Child here

There’s a simplified version of what the articles are in this post. There’s the odd one I don’t really get (if not for the title!) as the message is a bit vague (like the one with the donkeys!!?!) or its been badly produced, but the majority are brilliant. I’m not sure ‘favourites’ seems appropriate given the topic but here’s a select few that I think are well produced.

Related posts

• Donegal Youth Council (1)
• Supporting the Transition to Adulthood (0)
• Appropriate Relations Online with Young People (4)
• Who Influences Young People? (0)
• When is a Young Person Not a Young Person?! (7)

Tags: age, campaign, child rights, Films & Social Media, Participation & Citizenship, prejudice, social media

75% of young people involved in the UK Youth Parliament apparently believe the planet can only survive for another 50 years in its current state. (Taken from a survey held at their ‘annual sitting’.)

We’ve done bits of work with various factions of the UK Youth Parliament but I’ve never been involved with any of their annual sittings - I would expect though that given these are young people in a role to represent the views and concerns of other young people, that when they do meet to discuss such important issues they get the support of experts in the topics they discuss. So presumably when discussing environmental attitudes they were able to grill experts about what those risks are and to ask fundamental questions like is the planet really in danger? or is it that the planet will probably survive but the human race may not, and so on.

Assuming this is the case isn’t it a bit surprising that in the survey the person who apparently the UKYP members feel has the most power to influence young people regarding climate change is………………. David Beckham?!

Now in terms of media influence it may still be understandable to choose a high profile celebrity - but I can’t help but wonder whether theres a responsibility here for young people representing others to be able to take their inspiration from experts in the relevant fields - and to then inform other young people about who those experts are so that they base their decisions/opinions on credible information, not media puppets.

You can see more about the UKYP Annual Sitting on their website

Related posts

• Mullaghmatt Youth House (0)
• Young People Hanging around Shops (0)
• Supporting the Transition to Adulthood (0)
• Donegal Youth Council (1)
• Do us a Favour……. (2)

Tags: campaign, environment, Participation & Citizenship, policy, politics, Society & Issues, youth work

In ‘A Practical Approach to Youth Participation’ I included a chapter called the ‘Pathway to Participation’. I’ve adapted it and attached a pdf here. I started thinking about this again after seeing an appeal for young people to sit on an ‘advisory group’, and this got me thinking about the difference between a developmental approach to involving young people progressively and just recruiting young people ’straight to the top’.

Next month we’re doing some work with Streetgames. They’re exploring how to support young people from taking part in sporting activities with them through to becoming involved at a strategic level with the organisation. When we originally met up to discuss this, we spoke about the pathway and the need to have it in place prior to our training with them. The ‘pathway’ is the ‘journey’ that young people are able to take through the organisation - its how young people are able to progress from their initial involvement and then on to whatever positions of responsibility/involvement the organisation can offer them.

To use a sports organisation as an example this might be something like: (more…)

Related posts

• Research Report into Training for Young Peoples Community Involvement (3)
• Research Report into Peer Education (2)
• Free Resource no.1 Group Assessments (2)
• 2nd Free Resource - Know Your Group Cards (0)
• Youth Work Guide to Blogging (8)

Tags: Participation & Citizenship, res, Resources, soft skills

I commented in a discussion a while ago that one of the features of the right for children and young people to participate was also the right to choose not to participate. After I’d said it I wasn’t quite sure if it was actually what I’d meant to say! Then it sounded a bit dumb - so why would people in the youth participation field be interested in young people that choose not to participate?

Lots of reasons probably - like investigating why they don’t want to participate, looking at creative ways to encourage them to change their mind and & so on. But what about respecting their choice simply not to - would this be (more…)

Related posts

• UN Rights of the Child Cartoons (0)
• Zomba Children off to School! (0)
• Who Influences Young People? (0)
• When is a Young Person Not a Young Person?! (7)
• What is Youth Participation? (1)

Tags: child rights, Participation & Citizenship

At our meeting this weekend one of the things we looked at was our working practices as an organisation - including how we’re structured and how our members (including young people) can participate in our ‘governance’.

YoMo has a Board of Directors and a committee. The Committee has become a charity (The YoMo Foundation). The Charity and the Company are independent organisations (more…)

Related posts

• Who Influences Young People? (0)
• What is Youth Participation? (1)
• UN Rights of the Child Cartoons (0)
• The Right To Not Participate (2)
• The Pathway to Participation (4)

Tags: Participation & Citizenship

I was reading a blog earlier by the Young Adult Library Services Association about ‘What is Youth Participation‘.

It interested me because it advocates a project based approach to youth participation which is pretty similar to our own approach. I was disappointed though to read towards the end of the article (more…)

Related posts

• Who Influences Young People? (0)
• What is Youth Participation? (1)
• UN Rights of the Child Cartoons (0)
• The Right To Not Participate (2)
• The Pathway to Participation (4)

Tags: activities, Participation & Citizenship