YouthPolitik
School/community name: Vancouver, BC
By flavrusu on Flickr
Brief description/summary of project: YouthPolitik is a youth-led leadership program designed for youth aged 15-20 to learn about the city of Vancouver. It started in 2006 with a spring semester program running for about 4 months once a week for four hours. The same semester program was continued in 2008 which is when I took the program. Since then, I have helped organize youth alumni events such as a take on the Amazing Race throughout the city, and a YouthPolitik conference program which was essentially the original 4-month program squeezed into a day and a half.
What age range did this project/initiative target? Youth aged 15-20.
What cost, if any, is involved? YouthPolitik is a very costly program but fortunately, as it is run by the City of Vancouver’s Outreach Team, the government allocates money to the Social Planning Office who then distributes it to the Youth Outreach Team and is put towards events such as YouthPolitik (this is obviously not a typical youth-led initiative but a successful one nonetheless. I should mention that there are 5 members of the Youth Outreach Team and I believe about half of them fall under both the federal and provincial definition of youth, and the other half could be considered ‘young adults’.)
Some costs of YouthPolitik:
- Both the conference and semester programs were catered and feeding 90 people a week for the semester, and 3 solid meals for the conference program, as you can believe, was quite expensive.
- For both programs, we hired a number of speakers to come in and present on different issues the city faces, so we had to pay for speakers
- Some youth volunteers received honorariums
- Both programs required space to hold them in so that had to be paid for.
- The Conference also had an evening of entertainment with an improv group, dinner, a DJ (for a dance) and a band.
These are only some of the costs of the program and for the semester program in which I was a participant, one of the Youth outreach Team members actually drew up a budget for us so that we could see how the money was being used.
What approval had to be obtained for the project/initiative to be carried out? As government money was being used, the government had to approve the program, (mainly the mayor although he played a large role in creating the program so there was no problem there). We completely had the government’s support as the mayor and different council members would also come to visit the sessions and were asked to speak for some of the sessions. One of the sessions entailed a mock council debate in which youth were presented an issue and were given council chambers to actually discuss and make a decision on the issue. This mock debate was complete with youth playing the media, mayor, council members, and even the public.
What problems was this project/initiative designed to address? One of the main problems I think this program addresses is to let the youth know that the government does care about what they think and that youth can play a role in the decisions of government. Many youth feel helpless in the community and in their city and feel as if they have little role in the general decisions of the community. Some city councilors sat in at the debate and one of them openly announced that they thought the youth’s ideas were brilliant and would consider bringing the youth’s ideas to actual council.
Who organized/ran this initiative? The program was led by a group of 5 youth and about 3 adult/youth facilitators.
What were the main responsibilities/tasks of the leaders/organizers? In a program that runs on such a large scale as Youth Politik does, the organizers and facilitators had huge roles which included organizing the program, making sure it ran smoothly, and improving the program for the next year.
What were the short-term goals? To give youth leadership skills and confidence; create stimulating discussions and thought among youth; give youth a feeling of hope for change and opportunity; listen to the voices and ideas of youth
What were the long-term goals? As cliche as this is, to equip the youth of today with the skills and knowledge of what is needed to make the leaders of tomorrow; create youth-led change in the community.
By flavrusu on Flickr
Were these goals achieved? I think these goals were achieved and have created a snowball effect even throughout its short three year history. For example, many of my friends, I thought, had little initiative or drive to be involved in youth programs such as this one. I did not invite them to the YouthPolitik semester I participated in, simply because I didn’t think they would be interested. However, for the YouthPolitik conference we did outreach to schools, one of which was Prince of Wales. Our presentations to different Social Studies classes generated such excitement and talk that we received over 30 applications from PW (I thought we would be lucky if we got any). PW ended up having the largest representation of any school at the conference and all my friends were so excited even after the program.
How did this initiative benefit the school or community? All the goals that were achieved benefitted the community and will continue to benefit the community as long as YouthPolitik continues to inspire future youth, and past alumni draw on their experiences to act and create change in their community.
Any additional information about this project/initiative: I think I have said just about all I can about this program, but would also like to add that this program has been made successful through learning from its mistakes. At the end of every semester or even the conference, participants were given an evaluation form and after looking at the results from the form, the Youth Outreach Team and volunteers such as myself make sure to listen to the evaluations’ recommendations and improve the program for the next time around. We have brought in new, fresh speakers and as for the ‘boring’ speakers, perhaps deemed due to their dry material, have not invited them back.
