By Donna Lockhart
June 13, 2005 (as it appeared in Charity Village)
Many people would not look upon working with 'youth' as a gift. Especially adults with teenagers still living at home. I know many who would like to ship them out until they have matured and bring them back as adults! Just skip those challenging, frightening years of discontent and go directly to adulthood.
When the Ministry of Education introduced "community involvement hours" almost 5 years ago now, I was likely one of a small handful of Managers of Volunteers who actually embraced the idea. To me it was a 'gift' to the voluntary sector but as such it was not immediately apparent and there were many layers of wrapping to get through.
Managers of Volunteers are in the business of promoting voluntarism. This mandated opportunity to engage youth even as quasi-volunteers provided us with the potential to build them into life-long volunteers. An actual opportunity to work towards sustainable voluntarism.
But as many are aware, community involvement hours brought some major challenges to the field: a 40 hour commitment; no infra structure to support students search for meaningful opportunities; no understanding on behalf of students about the voluntary sector; no clear evaluation process for completion or what was an acceptable 'involvement opportunity'; many students leaving completion of this task until the 12th hour and many organizations unprepared for the deluge of youth at their doors.
If we are going to engage youth as volunteers then we need to do it right. This is no different than engaging other sectors in volunteering except that for many young people this is their first exposure to volunteering or community service. The Centre for Philanthropy provides us with valuable data on youth. The following statement reinforced for me that this "community involvement" requirement of high school students, was in fact a "gift" to the voluntary sector. How we use this gift is our challenge.
"An interest in volunteering, developed during one's youth is likely to be maintained in adulthood. This suggests the importance of providing positive, early volunteering experiences for youth, as these experiences may lead to continued volunteering in the adult years." NSGVP report 2000.
So how do we go about providing these positive experiences for youth? Here are a few of the best practices that I have learned in my work with youth and voluntary organizations. Whether you engage youth as pure volunteers, students/quasi-volunteers in community involvement, students in high school co-op programs or college students on placement, the foundations are the same.
Be Organization Ready
Barbara Oates, BC Regional Co-ordinator/National Consultant on Youth In Philanthropy, Community Foundations of Canada, recently wrote an article for Canadian Fundraiser entitled "Engaging The Millennium Generation revitalizes Organizations." In this article, she stresses the need to create the right conditions for involving youth.
"Genuine youth engagement does not just happen," says Oates. "It requires the presence of a variety of factors in combination for its initiative and implementation, and the creation and maintenance of conditions conducive to supporting its growth and evolution."
Barbara believes as I do that some of the primary factors include: "a field of interest relevant to youth, real decision-making responsibility, supportive adults, room for new ideas, and shifts of power and control." Many of these factors are a threat to organizations because they represent a change in culture, a way of work and a shift in many of the underlying structures.
This article on Best Practices is the beginning of what will be a continuing resource on engaging youth. I will explore some of these other areas that Barbara outlines in future articles. There are many pieces to put in place before involving youth. A sample of these pieces have been presented for your consideration.
The best advice: Don t engage youth because "it is the right thing to do." Engage youth because you have the right ingredients to provide successful volunteer experiences within an organization that is "youth-ready."