Canadian Health Network

Send this to a friend Print-friendly version Past Articles Subscribe to our Healthlink newsletter

Why youth participation?

Meaningful youth participation is about recognizing and nurturing the strengths, interests, and abilities of young people by providing them with real opportunities to become involved in decisions that affect them at individual and systemic levels. This kind of participation enhances youth health because it offers young people a chance to develop important decision-making and problem-solving skills, develop meaningful relationships, and bolster self-esteem. These benefits are known to protect youth against risk-taking behaviours that can have a negative impact on both their short and long-term health.

Youth have a right to participate

The right of youth to participate in decisions that affect them has been firmly endorsed through the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child (1989). This document recognizes that children and youth are entitled to respect, and that they are capable of contributing to their own well-being and to that of their communities.

Successful youth participation

Successful youth participation includes shared decision-making and collaboration with adults who can serve as resources and mentors for youth. The "Ladder of Participation", developed by Roger Hart, describes various levels of youth participation with a steady progression to meaningful shared decision-making between adults and youth.

Ladder of Participation

From: Roger Hart, Children's Participation: From Tokenism to Citizenship, UNICEF.

Positive youth development

Like adults, young people grow and develop best when they are given opportunities to experience, understand, question, and influence. During adolescence, young people begin to define their self-worth in terms of their skills and their ability to influence their environment. So for young people to make a healthy and effective transition to adulthood, they need opportunities to demonstrate that they are capable of being responsible, caring and participating members of society. A growing body of research about healthy adolescent development emphasizes that young people need environments with basic supports like safe places to gather, good relationships with peers and adults, opportunities to learn and practice the skills they require for different roles, and constructive activities for spare time.

Impact on service delivery and planning

Meaningful youth participation can positively influence the design and delivery of youth-serving programs. By involving young people in the planning process, services can better direct available resources to youth and be more successful at approaching issues that affect them.

Community development and health promotion research shows that people of all ages are more likely to commit to a program when they have been involved from the outset in its design and the plans to implement it. Creating opportunities for specific populations, including cultural-minority youth, youth in care, and youth with mental or physical disabilities to give input to programs designed to serve them, increases the likelihood that these groups will benefit from those programs.

Youth involvement in action

There are many good examples and models of how to involve youth in meaningful ways in health and community projects. Three members of the CHN Youth Affiliate provide examples of involving youth in meaningful ways in their projects.

The McCreary Centre Society's Youth Advisory Council (YAC) is a diverse group of about 18 youth. Over the past 5 years, the YAC has initiated its own projects like the annual B4, a youth-for-youth health conference in BC. A member of YAC serves on the Society's Board of Directors and a staff person serves as a resource and mentor for the group. The YAC provides a "youth-friendly" forum for young people to develop skills needed for effective participation as well as providing opportunities to make real contributions. Other McCreary/YAC projects include the Open Door, creating youth friendly communities, and The Next Step workshops, youth identifying priority health issues.

TeenNet project has developed the www.Cyberisle.org website, an online youth health site, developed for youth and with youth. TeenNet has involved youth in creating its various website components (Cyberisle, Smoking 'Zine and the Teen Clinic Online) in all stages of development and maintenance. Young people help to conduct initial focus groups to let youth pinpoint their issues, direct the overall look and feel of the site, contribute to writing the content on the site, and make up the numerous and diverse groups who 'road test' the site before it goes up. The TeenNet projects also hire youth staff and provide placements for high school coop students.

Kids Help Phone (KHP) also a partner in the CHN Youth Affiliate, provides another example of youth involvement through their youth ambassador program that helps to promote KHP services to kids who need them through presentations at schools and in the community. KHP also recently developed an interactive component to their website on bullying and violence that includes video scenarios that were written and directed by young people.

CHN and youth participation

Hwy-1.net is a web site that serves as a meeting place for a national youth network being developed by the CHN Youth Affiliate. The youth network will give feedback on CHN and on the health information on the site for youth. One of the first major projects planned to start the network is an on-line conference happening at hwy-1.net over youth week, May 6-12. At the conference, youth will identify health issues, prioritize the issues, offer actions plans for both youth and adults to address these issues, and participate in workshops about priority issues. Visit www.hyw-1.net to find out more information and to help provide some input on how you would like to see the conference unfold.