As a part of the Community Engagement Lunchtime Learning Sessions, last month the Youth Services team ran ‘Youth Engagement 101’. This informative session highlighted barriers young people experience when participating in decision making opportunities and taught participants strategies to best engage and interact with young people. Each person that attended said they feel more confident to engage young people after this session.
Youth Services has developed an awesome tip sheet with ‘tips to best engage young people’. Including the 'Principles of Youth Work Best Practice':
- Empowerment: Young people having greater control over their lives through participation.
- Purposeful engagement: Young people taking on valued roles, addressing issues that are relevant to them, and influencing real outcomes.
- Inclusiveness: Ensuring all young people are able to participate, regardless of background, culture, where they live, their gender or sexuality.
When consulting or engaging with young people you must consider how you will adjust your practice to be youth friendly, safe and encouraging so that they feel empowered to contribute and make decisions that are positive and effective overall.
The tip sheet also highlights things to consider when engaging young people, things to avoid and considerations and barriers.
Reach out to the amazing Youth Services team if you’d like to chat about engaging young people and read the tip sheet below.