The years between age 10 and 24 span a critical stage of life. It is a time when many behaviours that influence well-being in adult life are initiated or firmly set in place. Youth is also a crucial time for the development of skills that may determine future success or failure in school and work, and in the ability to form meaningful, lasting relationships. However, few young people have avenues for influencing those factors which have a direct impact on their development, such as education, employment, recreation, access to health care, or even personal safety. Those youth who are disenfranchised or marginalized, including youth in care, aboriginal youth, and sexually exploited youth, are even less likely than mainstream youth to have opportunities for participation in decisions affecting their lives.

Meaningful youth participation involves recognizing and nurturing the strengths, interests, and abilities of young people through the provision of real opportunities for youth to become involved in decisions that affect them at individual and systemic levels.

Successful Youth Participation

Successful youth participation involves shared decision-making and collaboration with adults who can serve as mentors for youth. As the Ladder of Participation illustrates, genuine youth participation moves beyond tokenism (such as inviting a young person to sit on a committee without real capacity to influence decisions) towards a process where youth have meaningful involvement in decisions affecting their welfare, in an environment which allows them to access and learn from the experience and expertise of adults.

Features of successful youth participation include:

• Respect (a non-judgemental, inclusive and inviting environment)
• Skills and tools (there is something for the young people involved to get out of)
• Models that work (have a vision, but be flexible to change)
• Things to do (tasks)
• Variety of expression (interesting and engaging)
• Support

Challenges of youth participation

• Tokenism (youth do not have ownership/buy-in)
• Age definition (who is a youth?)
• Lack of support (finances, monitoring, resources)
• Turnover and fluctuating membership
• Poor representation (lack of diversity of age, sex, abilities)
• Shortage of meaningful opportunities

Youth Participation Resources

These resources have come out of McCreary's youth participation projects. All projects have included youth involvement in varying capacities. Either in consultation in designing the project, youth staff employed, and/or youth have produced the final results.

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