Case Study: Practical Principles to Encourage a Civic Youth Pipeline

When determining if a project or process was successful, frequently we look at what the outcomes were, detailed statistics about what happened, as well as thinking about if the experiment or intervention can be sustained or scaled? More often than not though it's the impact of the process itself that matters.

Process is a huge part of everyday life in communities. Whether you are organizing a neighborhood block party or attending a public meeting, you are engaging with the governance processes and community structures that comprise our lives. These engagement opportunities can be few and far between, and frequently lacking sufficient pathways to engage with young people. Framing each of these engagements as opportunities to enter into civic process, there is an opportunity to expand the civic pipeline for youth. This can be as simple as experimenting with including youth in the civic processes that impact their communities.

Young people can start early and flex their civic muscle. Beyond elections, there are an increasing variety of opportunities for young people to engage in governance. This comprises everything from opportunities to work with mayors, delivering vital services to the elderly, or even building community infrastructure. Community centers create spaces and programs for young people to meet people from all backgrounds. Libraries provide pathways for processing and absorbing knowledge while also creating a life-long passion for learning. The question becomes whether or not these can be funneled into life long civic involvement. Art can inspire creativity and be channeled into important advocacy, such as the work of Critical Exposure in D.C. The question becomes whether or not these can be funneled into life long civic involvement.

Recently, hundreds of Boston young people came out to celebrate the vote for the nation's first youth driven participatory budgetingYouth Lead the Change process. A process lead in collaboration with the Mayor's Youth Council, Boston Centers for Youth & Families and the invaluable non-profit The Participatory Budgeting Project. Boston young people between the ages 12-25 met at events, welcomed with music and pizza, to help identify community priorities for spending $1 million in public funds. This was buttressed with Citizenvestor's custom platform for idea collection. At these meetings people signed up to be "change agents" and worked directly with city officials over several months to craft viable budget proposals. These projects were then presented back to the community for a week long city-wide vote. The winning projects are accessible here. Youth were given the opportunity to learn about and participate in synthesizing community needs, project scoping and planning, budget creation, presentations and public process -- not to mention getting experience with new technology tools. This process underscores the ability for young people to be engaged in non-traditional ways. A municipal budget hardly traditionally conjures up youth engagement.

However, how do you ensure that engagement leads to enthusiasm and not disillusionment? Bringing youth into the process, takes the risk of showing them the good with the bad, which could be why there hasn't been more youth focused civic experimentation. What if we considered every participatory engagement as a skill sharing or learning opportunity? We could build innovations with intentionally - providing opportunities for leadership development and public speaking -- focusing on the process to provide people an opportunity to develop or learn tangible skills. This could include everything from learning to build consensus and understanding how painstaking policy process can be or learning how to use a computer, a new application, or facilitation tools as part of the process.

Focusing on providing learning opportunities can apply at any age, but with youth in particular, the following principles can be instructive:

Allow for and promote ownership.

Ensuring that youth are meaningfully engaged requires concrete opportunities for young people to make decisions and have responsibility. Some traditional community stakeholders, and those in power, may fear vesting young people with actual authority. However, a lack of meaningful ownership will be a disincentive for them. For example, OTI's Digital Stewardscurriculum on community technology provides skills, such as learningto install a wireless router, and then supports people -- young and old -- working within their neighborhoods to create a healthy digital ecosystem. In Sayada, Tunisia , people of all ages engaged in workshops developed from the curriculum to build a wireless network in their community and provided local applications such as streaming music, a library of books, mapping tools, and wikipedia. This project, like the Boston Participatory Budgeting process, created a pipeline of independence and creativity where young people can learn about, create, and own an idea for their community. Without opportunities for leadership, skill development, and project ownership young people will be less inclined to remained engaged. Initiatives ought to begin by thinking thru every phase -- from initial engagements to the skill building needed for lasting impact.

Connect across generations.

Opportunities for multi-generational engagement helps foster more resilient communities and is mutually beneficial -- providing mentorship and growth opportunities. Youthprise has youth/adult partnerships combining education, leadership, and service towards peace making activities. One such endeavor, youthrive, is a peacemaking curriculum at a juvenile detention facility. The importance of these cross-generational opportunities is outlined in a recent report _Out of Many, One: Uniting the Changing Faces of America_, from Generations Unitedand The Generations Initiative, presented at the Urban Institute. Multi-generational engagement can lead to unexpected friendships, life long mentorship, and a new perspective that can have a lasting impact.

Communicate openly and realistically about the process.

While highly context specific, there are always opportunities to convey a form of updates and impact back to youth participants. Even if this is simply explaining that a given process took longer than expected. Instead of shielding people, embrace reality and be transparent. During Boston's Participatory Budgeting Youth Lead the Change, people understood when projects were too costly or logistically challenging. Students were grateful for the hands on civic education. Conveying tangible facts builds trust, models good communication skills, and informs participants about the rationale and the challenges of making projects happen. Young people can understand nuanced detailed, real life limitations, and process delays.

Concerns about engaging youth are understable. The stakes are high -- if people find the process overly cumbersome or boring they may leave disaffected. It's easy to fall back on the easy and shiny new fad or tool in use, rather than focusing on the process itself. However, there is virtue in deliberative, intentional, youth civic innovation. Reflecting on and planning for these types of experiments intentionally can spark new interests, lifelong connections, and even create a civic pipeline for deepening long term democratic engagement.

As we continue to explore the role of innovations in civic life, stayed tuned for further practical principles to re-engage people in their own communities - however they define it.

Suggested Reading

Civic Innovation Beyond Civic Technology Civic Innovation: a New America-wide conversation Busting the Buzzword: Social Impact and Civic Innovation