"Yes, Malala, we're listening" - youth participation

This blog, written by Wikichild co-ordinator Melinda George, is part of the Wikiprogress Series on child well-being. It focuses on three necessary steps to increase youth participation: listening, involvement in decision-making and involvement in the implementation.

Have you ever witnessed a child tugging on his or her parent’s clothes, soliciting a moment of attention? How long does it take for this primary caregiver to acknowledge the child’s presence? And then how much longer until this person, responsible for the child’s well-being, responds “yes, dear, I’m listening”, if ever? 

If our objective is to improve the lives and well-being of children, then we need to acknowledge their presence and take the necessary steps to include them in our efforts.

Listening to the youth is the first step in increasing youth participation.

Hear part of Malala Yousafzai's speech to the General Assembly:

All children have a voice, and we should do more to seek it out. Last week’s youth takeover at the UN General Assembly on “Malala Day” represents more than just a girl’s stand for education. Young people have been advocating for more rights and better treatment for centuries. The difference is that now we hear them. We are listening to what they have to say and are praising their efforts at an international level, at least those who speak loudly enough. We need to expand our audible range to go farther and deeper.

(See the Special Focus on Malala and her fight for education on Wikigender.)

Youth involvement in the policy-making process is the second step.

We have been saying for years that youth involvement is an important factor in generating sustainable progress. Agenda 21, a comprehensive plan of action on sustainable development for the 21st century [i], states that “youth comprise nearly 30 per cent of the world's population. The involvement of today's youth in environment and development decision-making and in the implementation of programmes is critical to the long-term success of Agenda 21”[ii]. It also states that beyond their intellectual contribution and their ability to mobilise support, children and young people bring unique perspectives which need to be taken into account. This report was written over 20 years ago.

This month, Wikichild hosted an online discussion entitled How should child well-being be measured in view of future development frameworks? Several participants mentioned the need to involve young people when deciding how to measure well-being and to include "having a voice" as an indicator. 

The discussion was launched at the HBSC 30th Anniversary Event, which discussed and executed youth participation. First, the Scottish Commissioner for Children and Young People presented the “7 Golden Rules for Participation” (see slides below).

(7 Golden Rules for Participation from Wikiprogress_slides)

Also at the event, HBSC welcomed a panel of youth from Canada, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and England, who presented a video on how they have been participatory in the decision-making process 
(see video below).

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The audience, full of child well-being experts, had countless questions about how young people could be better supported by schools, parents, relevant agencies and the community during this transitional adolescent period. The exchange was enriching, with the main message of support us, trust us and ask us.

Here's a quote from the Wikichild online discussion: 

“We need to ask young people in a more systematic and constructive way. They need to be involved in the development and the implementation of well-being measures.” 

- HBSC Event Participant

The third step is to involve youth in the implementation process.

Empowering youth so that they may be involved in the implementation procedure is the final stage of youth participation. A report by the Youth Visioning for Island Living (YVIL) states that young people, while dynamic and innovative, “often lack the concrete skills and tools necessary to implement their ideas[iii].”  We should find out what skills and tools the youth are lacking and then do what we can to make them readily available. Reaching this level of involvement requires time, training and investment, but it’s worth it.

These three steps should loop around, as we listen to feedback from young people in order to continuously improve the means by which youth can participate in the decision-making and implementation of  programs.

But first thing’s first ... Go ahead, youth, we’re listening. 

Melinda Deleuze
Wikichild co-ordinator

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 [i] Agenda 21 was drawn up after the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992

[ii] Chapter 25 of Section III of Agenda 21, entitled “Children & Youth in Sustainable Development”

[iii] Supporting Youth in the Implementation of Sustainable Development Activities (following the review of the SIDS programme of action, Mauritius 2005), initiative of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

Invisible Women: Making Women Count

As part of the Wikiprogress on Gender Equality series, this progblog article is bought to you by Angela Hariche and Karen Barnes Robinson. 

They graduated together five years ago, and took a job in the same firm in the same city. Three years later, he can afford a down payment on a house and she cannot.

Her day starts with fetching water and firewood and cleaning the compound. Once she has taken care of the needs of the men and children, she leaves for the marketplace to sell vegetables.

She has three young children. Finding it difficult to make ends meet, she is caring for her elderly neighbour on an hourly basis, while working a part-time job as a maid in a local hotel. Neither job comes with healthcare benefits.

These women are not victims. They are agents of change who bring resources, knowledge and capacity to their households, communities and societies. Without these women, the world would be worse off. Yet, they are still not being recognised, paid or valued for the work they do, and society as a whole suffers. Why is it this way? For much of the past two decades, the global economy has experienced a period of significant growth and overall rates of poverty have declined. However, inequalities between men and women, between rich and poor and between urban and rural communities remain rife. Why are women, in particular, not benefiting from global progress?

First, women are not being recognised. They are undervalued. In 2009, the European Commission launched a campaign to address the fact that on average, women earn 17.4% less than men. In the US, research has shown that one year after college, women earn only 80% of what their male colleagues earn. Why aren’t enough women being represented on boards or in politics? Can any of our current measures for economic performance address this issue? There are indicators that measure the percentage of women in senior positions over time but  if a country’s success was based on it, you can bet leaders would work a little harder to appoint women in top positions. If this indicator was important and recognised, imagine what might change.

Second, women are not being counted. They are invisible. Women are 50 percent of the population yet up until now, a lot of the work they do isn’t being considered in current measures of economic resources. What would it mean if all of the work that women do around the world was actually counted and measured over time? Recent research from the UN Research Institute for Social Development argues that if unpaid care work, mostly done by women, was assigned a monetary value, it would amount to between 10 to 39 per cent of GDP. Clearly there is a powerful economic argument for beginning to value women’s work. Unless this work is acknowledged in economic data, then policies will fail to target and support women and their contributions to the global economy will remain invisible. Once we are able to see the work they are doing, we can start counting it. What if there was an indicator called the household work indicator and it too was just as recognized as GDP?

Third, women are not able to access the same opportunities as men. They are marginalised. Globalisation and development processes have transformed men and women’s roles and relations, but this has not necessarily translated into more access to resources and greater empowerment for women or more gender equality. More women end up in the informal sector in ‘bad jobs’, and as recent research by the OECD Development Centre has shown, there is a ‘feminisation of bad jobs’, where discrimination against women leads to them being stuck in jobs with poor working conditions and low or no pay. This has major implications for the health and welfare of their households and their own economic and physical security. Little or no income means that women are also not saving or driving consumption and economic growth. What if there was an indicator called the well-being indicator and it was a measure of economic health of a society and it was fully recognised and supported like the mighty GDP?

We are now in 2013. The world has changed since 1930s when GDP was created. While we recgonise that GDP is a good measure of production, we call for equally powerful indicators that incorporate a broader range of factors including informal work. If these existed, we might see a difference in the world. Can we have sustainable economic growth and global progress when not only are there more women in worse jobs, but they are also consistently paid less for the work that they do or not paid at all? It is a question of supporting women’s rights and gender equality, but it is also a question of supporting smart economics by making sure that measures for progress in societies take women into account. There is considerable work being done on this at the OECD and around the world. However, unleashing the economic and social potential of women and making them visible in government policy is a major global challenge, one that would reap significant economic benefits if  really and truly supported. This would be revolutionary. In the end, it comes down to the fact that what doesn’t count isn’t counted, and we only count what we can see. We have to start seeing women and the work they do.

By Angela Costrini Hariche and Karen Barnes Robinson

See the Wikiprogress Focus on Gender Equality article for further reading. 

Gender Empowerment in India – Challenges and Opportunities.

As a part of the Wikiprogress on Gender Equality series, this progblog on gender empowerment in India is brought to you by one of our favourite bloggers Shailaja Chandra.

Shailaja Chandra gave a  talk on “Gender Empowerment in India – Challenges and Opportunities” to the National Defence College, New Delhi on 8th February 2013. Below is a copy of her slide show, please click on the screen to see the full presentation. 

Shailaja Chandra

(A former civil servant, Shailaja Chandra is the Vice President of Initiatives for Change-Centre for Governance, a think tank that supports social reform.)