Postings from the front line

Changemakers offers an entry point which allows young people to develop a sense of community spirit.  This encourages them to become involved in more formal types of civic engagement.

We can’t try and shoe-horn the current disengaged generation into becoming engaged, active citizens who feel a keen sense of involvement with the politics of this country overnight.  Reinvigoration and energy should be the focus to reinforce the idea that voting is a privilege of adulthood that should be associated with maturity and honour. Fundamentally we want young people to feel a need to vote.

John argued very strongly that the established voluntary sector will not be able to meet the big challenges of the 21st century, and that social entrepreneurs will be the ones providing workable and relevant solutions.

It was a very scary interview, rather like trying to channel a waterfall.  There was so much he wants to say and it's a horrible job trying to restrict him as you know that every member of your audience also wants to hear what he has to say.  A colleague saw Fiona Phillips interviewing Alastair Campbell at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Wednesday and said, rather charitably, that I did a better job so maybe the vacant seat on the GMTV sofa could be mine.  I just need the collagen implants.

A friend of mine was in the US a couple of months ago and visited local McCain and Obama campaign HQs.  He told me: “The McCain headquarters was peopled by earnest, 40+ party workers who were doing what they had done many times before.  “I walked into the Obama offices and it was full of young people.  As soon as I walked in I knew he’d won.”

I think texting appeals to young people because it’s very controllable.  Brevity is essential.  You can personalise and create a language within the language; another way of being exclusive.   And most importantly, you can't be caught on the hop.  You answer when you want to.  You can't be hurried or cajoled into responding, unlike the harrying call of a ringing phone.  It gives you time to be in control of what you say.   For a method of communication to become such a killer app so quickly within one generation we should look at its qualities, why it appeals, and how we can harness that appeal.  C u l8r.

Many organisations I come across seem to believe that building confidence in young people is about propping them up and putting them in positions in which they are cushioned from failure.  This has created a fear of failing in our young people, a fear of Getting It Wrong.  The big questions are not easy and I believe that part of our young people’s reluctance to engage with political issues comes not from laziness or ignorance but from a fear of not coming up with an immediate answer, of having to deal with the unsatisfying grey areas of life rather than the clear-cut.  I believe in letting young people Get It Wrong, and supporting them through the process of discovering that it’s not life-threatening.  Stopping them from ever Getting It Wrong is truly life-threatening.

I was talking to a driving instructor recently, and was reminiscing about my terrifying glory days kangaroo-jumping around behind an L-plate.  He told me that driving instructors face an even more difficult task these days, as many of the young people they are instructing either stopped attending school or lost interest in being taught anything years before they learn to drive.  As a result they are out of practise at being taught, and also find it very difficult to assimilate the fact that they cannot avoid doing the test in order to drive.  "Convincing them that if they do not change gear in the way I am showing them, or stop braking at the last minute, they will not pass their test is a real struggle.  They have been independent for ages, even though they are only sixteen or seventeen, and they have lost the concept of the right way being the only way." 

However, these students are the most rewarding to teach, he said, because of the sheer joy they experience at passing.  Passing your driving test is a key to freedom, and expensive and laborious as it is, it is a goal for millions of young people every year.  If we could somehow harness that desire for freedom, and link it to education and the freedom of choosing your career or lifestyle, we would have an ultra-motivated generation.   Sadly currently education is simply not perceived as giving the same reward as that first solo drive.

Young people need to be engaged in politics but parading "happy and normal" families in front of them is not the way to do it.

I'm excited and slightly apprehensive about giving up my job on 7th November 2008.  Not permanently you understand, simply as part of the second 11 MILLION Takeover Day.  My job is going to be taken by a young person for the day.  The previous Takeover involved 400 organisations, giving 10,000 children the chance to work alongside decision makers.    Our meeting about getting involved came after a discussion we'd just had in the office.  We were trying to work out how to present the case studies of the young people we represent.  We went through every permutation and then came to the conclusion that basically, we needed to keep out of the way and let the case studies speak for themselves.   What we do best as an organisation, and what has brought us the most success, is to stay backstage and let our young people take the spotlight.  This is why Takeover Day appeals to me as a concept, why it appeals to our young people, and also why I am feeling slightly anxious that I'll be permanently done out of a job on 8th November!

At its policy forum last weekend, Labour joined all the other mainstream British political parties in committing to lowering the franchise to 16 in its next election manifesto. 

All to the good you might think.  Surely fostering young people's civic engagement is what all of us are aiming to do?  But I have always had serious concerns about this proposal.

Politicos of all colours believe that the way to switch young people on to civic and civil engagement is through voting and formal political structures. This is because these same structures were what got them involved back in the day. But the vast majority of young people (and indeed the population in general) are switched off by the existing structures and choose to engage in different ways (volunteering and single issue campaigns are both extremely popular with the 16-25 age group).

Introducing votes at 16 merely addresses the symptoms of political engagement, not the cause. And it is also guaranteed to fail - every survey that has ever been done of under 18s demonstrates conclusively that they don't want the vote. Similar 'eye catching' initiatives like entering people into a lottery if they vote in local elections suffer from the same misconception.

What we need to do is to look more fundamentally at why people aren't interested in mainstream politics anymore. The 2006 Power Inquiry provided an excellent roadmap for how this trend should be reversed, but now seems to have been largely forgotten. We need to start with 'civil' engagement and gradually introduce people to the concept of 'civic' engagement. There is no doubt that the former can lead to the latter, if correctly nurtured.

Votes at 16 will merely extend the reach of our political class, one of the main causes of disengagement and cynicism, to a younger age group.

PS Michael White wrote a very entertaining article on this in The Guardian earlier this week which has stimulated much impassioned blog debate.

The child poverty issue has raised its head again, and brings with it the familar feelings of guilt, hopelessness and frustration.  Unless you're Gordon Brown or (hopefully) Barack Obama there's very little you can do.  But it made me think about poverty of thought.

In the meritocracy that we are fortunate enough to live in it is possible (although unfortunately not likely) that a child's poverty-stricken upbringing need not necessarily affect the rest of its life.  However, poverty of thought can blight someone forever.  The young people that slip through the educational or social care net may never get the chance to view their own lives objectively.   If you feel restricted and limited by your situation then you are not able to gain any perspective on the changes you could make.

I had the opportunity to meet Ray a few times when doing some work for the body created to advise David Cameron on Youth Policy .  He is clearly a man of great integrity and I am sure that his no-nonsense and challenging attitude will inspire young people who might otherwise drift to the margins of society.  It will be interesting to see how he shapes the brief over the weeks and months to come.

There is always a tendency for the voluntary sector to respond with cynicism when exciting new initiatives like MyPlace are launched.  My observations are therefore meant as a constructive critique of MyPlace’s initial plans.  We remain hugely supportive of this initiative.

It’s been a good start to the New Year for Changemakers - we have been commissioned by the DCSF to do a feasibility study on the proposed new National Institute for Youth Leadership.   Over the next few weeks we will be convening groups of experts from all sections of society and civic life to gather their views on how young people can be most effectively supported to become the leaders of the future.

We are particularly interested in the different leadership qualities that might be needed to meet the big global challenges of the mid 21^st century, like climate change, cultural and community cohesion.  Young people turning 18 in ’18, the young leaders of the future, will be facing very different demands as leaders to their counterparts of the last fifty years.  I’m coming to the conclusion that it is up to us to equip them to equip themselves.  I would be very interested in hearing your views on how we can best develop the leaders of the future.