Towards global youth council?

Sofia Laine  

How do you gather unbiased data? How can researchers influence youth policy? How do you use your findings? Do they (the youth researchers) think that they can change the world? Do youth researchers do enough to change these sometimes indifferent attitudes towards EU politics?

These and many other crucial questions were asked from the youth researchers in the three-day international conference on youth policy and research organised and hosted by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Economy, Family and Youth with the United Nations in Vienna. More or less 140 participants representing youth administrators, youth workers, youth researchers, different youth organisations and national youth councils came mainly from Europe (especially from Austria, i.e. 56 participants) but luckily enough there was not only some participants from North (2) and South (6) America but also from Asia (17) and Africa (10). As this structure of the conference remind me on the EU Presidency Youth Event in Hyvinkää, Finland 2006 I was eager to experience how the dialogue between different participants would appear.

After the exhausting afternoon and morning listening the plenary session that lacked three-partite structure (only the researchers were speaking – the young people’s and the policy maker’s perspectives were lacking) participants finally got an opportunity to start a real dialogue with each other in a form of a ‘world cafe’. There were 10 tables set with enough chairs, so that each and every participant could find their place in one of the tables. After everyone seated beside the same table had introduced themselves to the others, researchers gave short speeches about the theme of the table as well as some provocative statements. Then the floor was open to the discussion, and the ideas that came up were written down to table cloth. After a while everyone but the researcher and the Austrian youth (sometimes working also as a rapporteur) hosting the table were asked to go and join in another table, see what had already been discussed there and work for other ideas. After three rounds all the table cloths were hanged on the wall so that everyone had the possibility to read all the ideas. I really enjoyed this open and talkative working method.

The process continued in the four more traditionally operating working groups, handling the same issues raised during the ‘world cafe’ method, to come up with concrete project ideas. In the youth participation working group facilitator Marek Staszczyk underlined the importance to speak simple English so that everyone could have a possibility to follow the discussion. As well he underlined the importance to listen each other carefully. And maybe these guidelines worked and everyone wanted to show good participation in practice. The working group was active and really working for the project ideas. It was great to experience in a practice how a small global community can be formed in couple of hours to interlink and share ideas. Even when the people came all over the world we found many common issues and we also come up with new proposals that majority of the participants supported.

Before the concrete proposals every participant of the group was asked to think where they would like to participate. I video recorded all the answers and placed this small documentary into You Tube.

As comes clear in the video the winning project came up by the representatives coming from Benin and Greece. “A cross-cultural cooperation initiative with youth organizations/councils around the world to facilitate the access to information for Benin rural youth, to promote youth participation, mutual understanding and co-habitation of the world cultures and civilizations” is an idea of community ICT centres for rural (or other way marginalised) youth, especially in the developing countries. These community ICT centres would be provided with their own power source (such as solar energy plant), computers, printers, web cams, internet access, etc. In addition to bringing an ICT access to rural/marginalised youth the centres could also work as places for local youth council’s where young people could come up with different kinds of project proposals. To make the project more global, the different youth councils around the world would interact with each other in some common platform on the internet.

But the virtual community is not enough. The conference experience once more convinced me that face-to-face interaction in the reality, when the people who have travelled hundreds and even thousands of kilometres to the same location, evokes something unique, something else than the virtual dialogue can do. For the social dynamics to develop to its best the people should be kept speaking and interacting as much as possible: next time, hopefully, there will be minimal time for lectures and maximal time for real dialogues and networking.

The writer is M.Soc.Sci. and works as a researcher in the Finnish Youth Research Network.

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