Posted by Sarah on July 28, 2008 – 9:05 pm
After attending a youth engagement seminar hosted by United Way, there was a collective decision by the OYN crew that our project was not being true to its youth-led mantra. At the moment the Advisory Committee is the only avenue for people to get involved, and the average age of its members is above 20, while this project is meant to target youth between the ages 13 to 24. We need to formulate a youth engagement strategy as soon as possible. To help us do this, we had a meeting with Ratsamy Pathammavong who works for the Lung Association mobilizing youth around health issues through the YATI (Youth Advocacy Training Institute). She has an amazing energy and a few of her nuggets of wisdom were as follows:
- Be very clear about what are the youth-led areas of this project, and what spaces youth have to make decisions about the project
- Avoid making false promises to youth and others
- Notify people about limitations due to budget, funding requirements, management, proposal constraints…etc
- Concrete suggestions regarding youth voice on the AC include:
o Having youth chair meetings
o Having a 50% youth quorum
o Using “dotmocracy” as a non-verbal way of getting people’s opinions about issues
o 2:1 voting status (youth:adults)
Another resource at our disposal was the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians (CASSA) publication “Leading by Example: Youth Leadership in Non-Profit Governance” written by Soni Dasmohapatra and Beenash Jafri. We found the most useful parts of this guide to be “CASSA’s Principles of Youth Engagement” and the South Asian Youth Advisory Committee (SAYAC) “Terms of Reference”. The “Principles” are the philosophical backbone of CASSA’s approach to youth engagement within the organization, and the SAYAC “Terms of Reference” are useful to us as a model upon revision of our own Advisory Committee’s Terms of Reference.
Updates will come soon regarding what direction the OYN decides to take after digesting this information. If you have any useful links/resources/suggestions, please leave us comments below or email us at youth-jeunesse@ocasi.org
An awesome resource we have found is a “Youth Friendly” guide by Apathy is Boring which has an awesome section on “How to Make A Meeting Real to Youth” and info on how to make your organization more youth-friendly. It can be found here.
Posted by Sarah on July 14, 2008 – 5:01 pm
Who is the Advisory Committee?
The Advisory Committee will be composed of approximately 15 members, including self-identified newcomer youth and youth workers. For current member bios, go here!
What Does The Advisory Committee Do?
The main task of the Advisory Committee is to assist, advise and support SYNC and the youth website. More specifically, Members are expected to host focus groups with newcomer youth, and are provided the training to do so. Results of this research will be analyzed, compiled, and published as a best practices guide for settlement workers on how to best help newcomer youth. The Committee will meet 3-4 times a year for a period of 2 years to discuss and provide feedback on the progress of the project.
Why Join? As an Advisory Committee member, you will be a part of:
- Creating a valuable resource for newcomer youth and the settlement sector
- Getting training in community based research methods
- Learning how to organize and facilitate a focus group
- Gaining Advisory Committee experience
- Being part of a province-wide group
- Helping develop a guide for youth workers on how to best work with newcomer youth, as part of SYNC
- Meeting and networking with other youth and youth workers from across the province
Advisory Committee members will be trained in community based research methods, anti-oppression, and supported in performing key informant interviews, survey analysis, and facilitating focus groups for the SYNC project. These are skills which can be easily transferable to a number of fields and would greatly benefit Advisory Committee members.
AC members also get the experience of being part of an advisory committee and a provincial initiative.
Members are also an important part of the development of invaluable and necessary resources for newcomer youth and newcomer youth workers. Resources which will help answer the questions that newcomer youth are afraid to ask, that will provide information that newcomer youth did not know about and that will greatly help newcomer youth workers in assisting newcomer youth settling in Ontario.
Posted by chris on June 10, 2008 – 6:02 pm
One of the challenges that often comes up in any new project is determining who gets a seat at the table to define the problem that the project is trying to resolve. Oftentimes it’s people who are established ‘authorities’ on the subject and they’ll tell you what is wrong with some group of people and how to solve the ‘problem’. This has created problems historically as people were researched on, their realities constructed by outsiders, and inappropriate solutions imposed on them. (Not to completely dismiss the notion of experts of course - expertise is invaluable in lots of ways).
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