Principles of 'Meaningful' Youth Participation
| To ensure meaningful participation, we should follow a set of principles to guide and help us through the experience from planning to the evaluation stages. |
Just having young people involved is not enough for an experience to be considered meaningful youth participation. When we practice meaningful youth participation, we want young people to have a quality experience that is Relevant, Exciting, Accessible, Learner-Led (REAL) for them. Participation should be a space of learning and empowerment for the young people involved, having a positive impact both for the individuals and the organisation.
The best way to determine what is going to be meaningful for the children and young people you are working with is to ask them directly and agree a set of principles/guidelines that you follow together.
This Framework sets out some recommended principles to follow based upon existing research into what makes children and young peoples’ participation meaningful. When we are engaging girls and young women in opportunities to participate, we must make sure it is transparent, accountable, accessible, intersectional, supportive, engaging, authentic and voluntary. The table below shows what each of these principles looks like:
Principles | What this means in practice |
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Transparent | Participants are given information about their right to participate in an age-appropriate format. The information includes:
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Accountable | After they have participated, young people receive follow-up information and/or feedback that clearly explains:
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Accessible | Young people do not face barriers to their participation, because steps are taken to ensure their involvement at all stages:
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Intersectional | There is no ‘one-size fits all’ approach, any and every child and young person are included:
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Supportive | Young people are prepared and feel welcome in the participation space:
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Engaging | Wherever possible, youth participation is innovative, active and enjoyable – just like any other Girl Guiding/Girl Scouting activity:
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Authentic | Young people have actual decision-making power:
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Voluntary | Participation is always a choice, meaning that young people:
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These principles have been adapted from Lansdown, G & O’Kane, C (2014) Toolkit on Monitoring and Evaluating Children’s Participation. One major adaptation is the incorporation of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (1989) theory of Intersectionality into one principle to encourage an equitable approach in our work on meaningful youth participation.
What can an experience of participation that is not meaningful look like? |
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| Scenario 1: A group of adult leaders want their next regional camp to be youth-led. They put out a call for girls (aged 11-14) to join the organising committee. Once the committee is selected, the adult leaders quickly realise that the girls do not know many things related to planning a camp, especially understanding what will be realistic to achieve in their timeline and within budget. The adult leaders start to take actions and make decisions based on what they know is feasible, such as creating a list of activities and designing a possible menu, and then ask the girls for their ‘approval’ before proceeding with organising these. |
| Here, the intention of the adult leaders had been to foster a youth-led space, however, by not taking into account what would be appropriate for the age of participants it became an instance of decoration where adults make most of the decisions with the girls as the face of the event. The principles of accessible and authentic were overlooked. |
| Scenario 2: A local commissioner wants to decide what activities her area should offer girls in the next year. She decides to hold a consultation for all members aged 5-14, which she asks adult leaders to carry out in regular unit meetings and send the responses back to her. When running the activity, adult leaders don’t give girls a choice of whether to take part or not, they don’t explain how girls’ answers will be used, and mostly just read the options out, inviting girls to put their hands up to answer. Later, when the final activities are announced, adult leaders tell the girls this was decided by them in the voting activity they did months earlier. |
| In this scenario, what the local commissioner intended to be a consultation has become to some extent tokenism. By not giving girls a choice in whether to take part or not and by not fully explaining the purpose of asking these questions – the adult leaders have inadvertently removed girls’ capacity to give a genuinely informed decision. Their participation experience also was not very engaging, the questions could have been asked in a more interactive way for the girls to want to participate in consultations again in the future. The principles of voluntary, transparent, supportive and engaging were overlooked. |
| Scenario 3: A Member Organisation is setting up a partnership with an environmental charity to design a new programme badge. They set up a co-creation team of young women who care about climate action and adult staff & volunteers who are in contact with the charity. The adults are fully informed of the charity’s needs from the programme but choose not to share this information with the young women because they don’t want to limit their ideas. When discussing possible activities for the programme, the adults only agree with the suggestions that will match the charity’s needs. The young women don’t fully understand why some ideas are chosen over others but are happy that their ideas are being used. |
| In this scenario, the co-creation team was intended to be a collaboration between the young women and adults, however, it became manipulation when the adults did not share what they knew about the charity’s needs. Whilst it was well-intentioned, it meant that the young women were not fully informed, and the adults had already decided what activities would be suitable as they knew the full context but gave the illusion of choice to the young women. The principles of transparent, supportive and authentic were overlooked. |
Reflect and challenge yourself |
If we follow these principles the experience of young people should be REAL:
Meaning that we have delivered a quality Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting experience! |
