Introduction

Child and youth participation became widespread following the broad ratification of the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (Lundy 2007). As per Article 12 of the CRC, children and young people have “the right to express a view” on “all matters affecting the child” and for their views to be given “due weight according to age and maturity” (Lundy 2007). Over the past few decades, child and youth participation has become an aim of initiatives focused on a breadth of areas including education, homes, child protection, urban planning, research, and community and social advocacy (Duramy and Gal 2020). Youth participation has become high on the policy agenda for the international development sector, particularly in the last decade. Currently, there are approximately 1.21 billion young people between the ages of 16 and 24 globally, and most of this cohort live in the Global South (United Nations 2020). Development actors have developed youth strategies with the aim of capitalising on the “demographic dividend” that this young cohort represents and delivering key policy objectives (for example, see DfID 2016; USAID 2022).

Studies of development initiatives and the Global South show that power asymmetries between young people and adults can prevent young people from participating (Campbell et al. 2009; Pells 2010; Duramy and Gal 2020; Trivelli and Morel 2021). Traditional norms and expectations contribute to a fear that youth participation might undermine adult authority (Duramy and Gal 2020). Young people may be given opportunities to participate, for example, on community project committees with adults, or at national forums with adult decision-makers (Campbell et al. 2009; Pells 2010). However, in such cases, adults tend to patronise, rebuke, or ignore young people’s perspectives (Campbell et al. 2009; Pells 2010).

The development sector has an increasing focus on enabling young people’s participation; however, in community contexts, social norms and power asymmetries with adults tend to limit young people’s participation. This creates a key dilemma for NGO practitioners who aim to enable young people’s participation in their day-to-day work with communities. This study aimed to understand the perspectives of adult NGO practitioners who design, manage, and implement international development initiatives focused on youth participation. In this paper, I define youth as a period of time where an individual makes life transitions from dependence to independence, rather than ascribing a particular age range (Furlong 2012). I use the term “adults” to describe individuals who have passed the life stage of youth. I understand that these terms are problematic, as young people can also be adults. However, this distinction is useful to the extent that it allows for discussion of the differing roles and positions occupied by those who are young, and those who are not young.

In this paper, I apply a spatial lens to understanding the complex issues that NGO practitioners face in participatory practice. I aim to build on the increasing focus on space, place, and geography within youth studies literature (Farrugia and Wood 2017; Farrugia and Ravn 2022). The findings show that NGO practitioners must navigate tensions around achieving NGO aims, working with adult community members, and ensuring that youth participation is beneficial and relevant to young people. Interviewees highlighted issues around the constraining nature of adult-dominated spaces. They also raised challenges around ensuring that the participatory and empowering effects achieved in youth spaces can be shifted, or “distanciated”, to intergenerational spaces with adults (Kesby 2007). Drawing on the interview data, I argue that NGO practitioners can play four important roles as collaborators, guides, facilitators, and advocates in participatory initiatives. When NGO practitioners take on these various roles in different spaces and contexts, they can contribute to the distanciation of the resources, discourses, and practices that can enable young people’s participation in everyday, intergenerational spaces.

Space, Participation, and Distanciation

A spatial lens is critical to understanding power, participation, and empowerment in youth participation and development initiatives. I take a post-structuralist view that power does not only exist in the form of domination, and is not necessarily “evil” (Gallagher 2008a). Instead, power is ambivalent, it is “both dangerous and full of promise” and “both a means of control and a means of resistance” (Gallagher 2008b). Power is also not a commodity that can be redistributed from the powerful to the powerless, and there is no linear pathway for participants to become empowered (Kesby 2007; Gallagher 2008a; Mannion 2009). A view of power as productive and circulating highlights that new social positionings are possible when individuals and groups take part in participatory initiatives (Kesby 2007; Mannion 2009).

Participation is spatial—it is context-dependent and contingent on local and regional settings or spaces (Kesby 2007). The differing norms, forms of power, social hierarchies, and histories of different spaces can make certain dominant individuals feel they are able to speak freely, while others feel they cannot (Cornwall 2004; Massey 2005). Young people and adults tend to have unequal relationships where adults dominate (Gallagher 2006). These relations are underpinned by ageist norms and attitudes, and the intergenerational spaces produced therefore tend to be unequal (Gallagher 2006). While adults tend to dominate, this does not mean that young people cannot exercise power or agency (Gallagher 2008a; Mannion 2009). Both young people and adults co-construct relations and practices (Mannion 2009). They reciprocally affect and are affected by the spaces that they occupy together and separately (Mannion 2009). Young people can also engage in forms of resistance and struggle (Gallagher 2008a). Youth participation is “always unfolding as an intergenerational performance wherein identifications, spaces, and power struggles are key” (Mannion 2009). Therefore, as Mannion (2009) advocates, youth participation is best understood as a spatial and relational practice.

Participatory initiatives aim to establish sociospatial arenas where individuals, who are usually marginalised, are able to participate in empowered ways (Kesby 2007). The term “empowerment” has radical, political origins in movements of the 1960s and 1970s, including women’s and black liberation groups (McLaughlin 2016). However, empowerment has become an overused buzzword in development and social policy and practice, which has been diluted and neutralised when compared with its original meaning (Cornwall and Brock 2005; McLaughlin 2016). I agree with youth scholars who highlight that it is not helpful to understand empowerment as a one-way transmission in which adults “give” power to young people (Gallagher 2008a; Mannion 2009; Hartung 2017). In this paper, I draw on the works of Mike Kesby (2005; 2007), and I understand an individual’s empowerment as an effect of the deployment of resources (which may be particular objects, practices, knowledge, ideas, language, or relationships) in material space. This understanding of empowerment also acknowledges the ways that power and empowerment are alike and entangled (Kesby 2007). Gallagher (2008b) argues, drawing on the works of Foucault, that power exists only when it is put into action. Similarly, Kesby’s (2005) understanding of empowerment emphasises the way that empowerment arises from the action of deploying resources. Understanding power and empowerment as actions, or arising from actions, therefore highlights the significance of where, and in what spaces, such actions are performed.

In participatory spaces, the material and discursive resources that enable empowered participation are available for participants to deploy (Kesby 2005). These spaces are governed by discourses and practices that differ from those in everyday spaces (Kesby 2007). This creates an opportunity for unique interactions between participants, which can lead to “questioning about what constitutes normal relations” in everyday spaces (Kesby 2007). Young people may find that they are able to participate in empowered ways during an initiative, but are unable to do so outside of carefully controlled participatory spaces (Kesby 2007). Some NGO practitioners may attribute the issue to temporal factors, arguing the project did not last long enough to empower participants beyond the life of the project (Kesby 2007). However, Kesby (2007) highlights it may also be due to spatial factors, as the environment that enabled their empowered participation did not extend far enough. Kesby (2007) coined the term “distanciation” to describe this issue. In order for empowering effects to be distanciated beyond participatory spaces, the resources that enable young people’s empowerment will need to be available and deployed in everyday spaces (Kesby 2005).

The NGO Practitioner: Motivations, Roles, and Relations with Participants

The aim then, for practitioners implementing participatory initiatives, is not only to create participatory spaces but to contribute to the distanciation of resources that enable empowered participation in everyday spaces. However, some questions and tensions arise when considering the power asymmetries between the NGO practitioner and participants. Kesby (2005) posits that facilitators occupy a “powerful” position that is “condoned” by the participants. Kesby (2005, p. 2048) suggests that, given there is no escape from power, “surely we have no choice but to draw on less dominating frameworks”, such as the participatory initiatives that require a facilitator, “in order to destabilise and transform more dominating forms of power” that the initiative is trying to transform.

While Kesby makes some compelling points, I argue that the role of the NGO practitioner requires further nuancing, particularly in the context of youth participation initiatives. Some scholars highlight that youth participation initiatives tend to be designed and initiated by adults in a way that serves adults’ interests (Hartung 2017; Ravn 2019). The initiatives may establish narrow and prescribed forms of participation that are not necessarily of interest to young people (Kiili 2013; Hartung 2017; Ravn 2019). For example, NGOs may aim to promote liberal democratic values and notions of citizenship by establishing child and youth parliaments (Kiili 2013; Hartung 2017). In such contexts, young participants may feel pressure to “adultify,” or “pass as an adult”, in order to participate (Hartung 2017). Some studies show that the most articulate and privileged young people are able to participate, while those from marginalised backgrounds are not invited or lose interest (Kiili 2013; Kwon 2019; Trivelli and Morel 2021). Young people who are not interested in these forms of participation may be perceived as failed and disengaged citizens (Hartung 2017). However, some youth scholars suggest that the choice not to participate is actually a form of self-expression (McGarry 2016; Ravn 2019). Young people may reject narrow forms of participation and notions that they somehow require improvement through participation (Hartung 2017). The implication, then, for adult NGO practitioners, is to reflect on the motivations and aims of participatory initiatives and consider how participation could be of interest and benefit to young people.

Furthermore, Lohmeyer’s (2020) concept of “parallel projects” is instructive. Lohmeyer (2020) suggests that research processes are adult-centric, and power asymmetries in youth research may be “unsolvable”. Adult researchers will arrive at the research encounter with particular aims and projects; however, young people also arrive at the encounter with their own reasons, methods, or goals (Lohmeyer 2020). I suggest that participatory initiatives tend to be adult-centric as adult NGO practitioners have the power to initiate and design projects and allocate financial resources. However, NGO practitioners should not assume that leaving young people to their own devices will eliminate power dynamics and lead to an ideal and independent form of participation (Hartung 2017). Drawing on the concept of parallel projects, young people may choose to participate for reasons that adults may not have predicted or expected (Lohmeyer 2020). Young people may welcome support, allocation of funding, and guidance from adult NGO practitioners in order to achieve their own projects and goals (Mannion 2009; Hartung 2017). NGO practitioners may be able to understand some of the young people’s projects or reasons for participating, but some reasons will also be missed or misunderstood (Lohmeyer 2020). Young people and NGO practitioners may have conflicting projects, and initiatives may fail or require some negotiation in order for both parties to achieve desired outcomes (Lohmeyer 2020). The notion that participants have parallel projects is also true in relation to adult community members who participate in initiatives alongside young people. Therefore, practitioners must find a way to mediate their own projects, young people’s projects, and adults’ projects in order to progress the initiative.

The role of the NGO practitioner is highly complex. Power asymmetries between adult NGO practitioners and young people may be inevitable, given practitioners have the power to design initiatives, set agendas, and allocate funds. However, in this paper, I argue that NGO practitioners are able to exercise their power in a way that supports young people’s participation.

Research Design and Methodology

This study sought to understand the stories and experiences of NGO practitioners who design, manage, and implement international development initiatives focused on youth participation. The aim was to achieve an in-depth exploration of perspectives from a small sample of practitioners. The study took a constructivist, qualitative approach. I conducted a one-hour-long, one-on-one, semi-structured interviews with nine participants. I obtained approval from the University of Melbourne's Human Research Ethics Committee (ethics number 1851534.1). Interviewees gave informed consent to participate, have their interviews audio-recorded, and are anonymous in the presentation of the findings.

The study was conducted in 2018 as part of my Honours degree research project. At the time, I was 22 years old and volunteering at a youth-led Australian NGO focused on youth participation in international development, particularly in the Asia Pacific. I was passionate about the work but felt very new to it, and I wanted to better understand the barriers to youth participation. I acknowledge that an inherent irony of this study is that it seeks adult practitioners’ views on youth participation, rather than asking young people. The university’s perspective was that it would not be feasible for an undergraduate Honours student to carry out research with young people overseas and receive necessary ethics approvals, in the 9-month time frame provided for an Honours project. However, in my time as a volunteer, I built relationships with a number of adult practitioners working on child and youth participation at other NGOs. I found their perspectives critical, reflexive, and insightful. I decided it would be valuable to understand their unique perspectives and personal stories as facilitators of youth participation in development practice, as this perspective is often missing from policy papers, strategies, and scholarly works focused on youth participation in development.

I initially recruited a few participants who I had built relationships with in my volunteer work and employed a snowball sampling technique to further recruit participants. Cumulatively, the nine participants had worked at eight different NGOs or multilateral organisations. Organisations were based in Australia, or had an Australian office. Cumulatively, the participants had worked on youth initiatives across Asia and the Pacific in Cambodia, Fiji, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Vanuatu, and Vietnam. The thematic areas that participants had worked on included youth employment and vocational training, education, health, natural resource management, and advocacy and leadership. Interviewees described some initiatives as focused on young people’s learning and skills-building, while other initiatives were focused on facilitating young people’s participation in community decision-making and the implementation of community projects.

The research took a thematic approach to analysis. Reading the transcripts, it was evident that space was a central theme in the participants’ discussions of challenges, and also in developing potential approaches to such challenges. Participants occasionally spoke about what other actors could do differently, but they tended to focus on the particular actions that they, as NGO practitioners, could take to address challenges. This focus on space and the role of NGO practitioners necessitated the analysis of social space, the nature of adult and youth relations, and power. Interview transcripts were coded for themes related to space, and sub-codes were developed according to the specific challenges and approaches identified by the participants.

Findings

Problems with Youth Participation

I begin by discussing three key problems that interviewees identified with youth participation initiatives. Firstly, participatory initiatives lack benefits or relevance to young people. Secondly, young people may be able to participate in empowered ways in youth spaces, but these empowered effects are not distanciated into intergenerational spaces. Finally, the norms, discourses, and practices in adult-dominated spaces make it difficult for young people to participate.

Relevance and Benefit to Young People

Youth participation initiatives are often driven by adults and designed to fulfil organisations’ agendas. This can result in initiatives that are not interesting or relevant to young people. Some interviewees commented:

I think the difficulty is often finding the mutual benefit. So, it’s very clear to program officers why they want to engage young people, “we want to do this for their empowerment”, but [it can be difficult] for young people themselves to see the benefit of that, particularly if they’re trying to earn an income - and volunteering is not really a luxury that a lot of young people around the world have. (Interviewee 3. Interview with Annie Douglas. June 7, 2018.)

[NGOs] develop programs and say, “and then the young people can be involved in, you know, the health club or the sanitation club or the something or other club” and it sounds boring. I think… this construct that everything has to have young people involved in it, and we’ll give them a voice… it’s false…The opportunities, they’re not meaningful, or they’re not relevant. (Interviewee 4. Interview with Annie Douglas. June 13, 2018.)

I think, yeah, if I put myself in their shoes, it’s not always the coolest thing to participate. (Interviewee 9. Interview with Annie Douglas. July 12, 2018.)

As the first interviewee’s comment suggests, adult NGO practitioners may aim to promote rights and empowerment in line with their organisation’s mission and theory of change. However, these aims may not be totally aligned with young people’s needs and interests, particularly young people who are keen to invest their time in “earning an income” and don’t have the “luxury” to be engaging in unpaid activities. Young people’s decisions not to participate in initiatives may therefore be considered as a form of self-expression and a way of managing competing life priorities (McGarry 2016; Ravn 2019). Some NGO practitioners may believe it is important to fulfil young people’s right, as per Article 12 of the CRC, to participate in “all matters that affect” them. However, the second interviewee’s comment suggests that this “construct” is “false.” The interviewee highlights that not all opportunities for young people to participate, that are devised by development NGOs, are necessarily “meaningful” or “relevant”.

Youth Spaces and Distanciation

Participants may be able to participate in carefully facilitated youth initiative spaces. In such spaces, young people can engage in discourses and practices quite unlike those in adult-dominated spaces (Kesby 2007). Adults may be present in these spaces, but the spaces are established with the intention of supporting a group of young people. Drawing on newly developed skills, knowledge, and relationships with their peers, young participants can formulate and express new ideas. Therefore, young participants are able to deploy the material and discursive resources made available to them in a way that enables their empowered participation (Kesby 2005). However, when young people move to adult-dominated spaces, they may feel that such resources are either unavailable to them or insufficient. This highlights a problem with distanciation. One interviewee mentioned:

You can’t just do young women’s leadership training in isolation… Because otherwise you build up their confidence and they’ll speak in public and there may be some backlash against that. (Interviewee 2. Interview with Annie Douglas. June 5, 2018.)

Having spent time in spaces where their views are listened to and supported by peers and adult facilitators, young people may become frustrated at the lack of support they experience when they try to raise these views in adult-dominated spaces. Another interviewee commented:

Even if they’ve been in a club with young people their own age and feel quite able to articulate how they feel, that’s completely different to sitting in a room with a bunch of people who you feel have power over your life. (Interviewee 3. Interview with Annie Douglas. June 7, 2018.) 

As the interviewee’s comment suggests, in youth spaces, young people are able to articulate their views and draw on their positive and collaborative relationships with their young peers. But when young people are surrounded by adults who have “power over [their] life”, they are reminded of the societal structures and hierarchies that limit their participation (Gallagher 2006).

Norms, Discourses, and Resources in Adult-Dominated Spaces

In intergenerational spaces, adults tend to dominate while young people feel they cannot speak freely (Kesby 2007). In such spaces, adults may patronise, undermine, or exclude young people from decision-making out of fear that youth participation could undermine adult authority (Pells 2010; Duramy and Gal 2020). Interviewees identified that norms and societal structures can prevent young people from participating in such spaces:

Young people are not seen as leaders, and shouldn’t be speaking, certainly in public meetings or in community level meetings around issues that impact them as much as anyone else… It is around those attitudes where young people should be seen and not heard. (Interviewee 2. Interview with Annie Douglas. June 5, 2018.)

If young people come together and want to criticise or have some ideas about how things can be better, rarely do [adults] listen because it’s still this very patriarchal, very ageist, very oppressive, top-down structure. (Interviewee 7. Interview with Annie Douglas. June 28, 2018.)

The cultural norms really say, hierarchically, young people shouldn’t be leaders, they shouldn't be outspoken, they should progress through the stages of age and experience to be able to take a voice. (Interviewee 8. Interview with Annie Douglas. July 5, 2018.)

As one interviewee suggests, in spaces like “public meetings” or “community level meetings”, young people are not given the opportunity to participate due to the social norm that young people should be “seen and not heard.” Decision-making spaces are governed by hierarchies and structures that position adults as dominant. The social norm is underpinned by a belief that young people should “progress through the stages of age and experience” before participating. The interviewee’s comments reinforce the existing literature on traditional cultural norms and attitudes (Duramy and Gal 2020). Importantly, interviewees also stressed that there are nuances and differences across different cultural and community contexts.

Adult-dominated spaces do not only exist in community contexts but also NGO spaces. Even when adults have open and receptive attitudes to young people’s participation, young people may not feel confident in their ability to participate. Some interviewees shared their interpretations of young people’s feelings and reactions, for example, in NGO meetings:

In formal decision-making, where you’re sitting in a board room in an NGO or somewhere… you see the young people shrink. Because they’re not dressed in the same way, they don’t speak the same way… A lot of the jargon just isolates and disempowers people. (Interviewee 1. Interview with Annie Douglas. May 17, 2018.)

As soon as you put young people into an office space, they know that’s not for them. They don’t work there, and they instantly feel that they do not have the skills, capacity, or confidence to participate in that space. (Interviewee 3. Interview with Annie Douglas. June 7, 2018.)

As the interviewees suggest, the typical language, dress, and surroundings of an office environment may cause young people to feel unconfident in their ability to participate and voice their views. Young people may feel that they are unable to deploy the discursive resources, including command of appropriate language or “jargon.” They may also feel that they do not have the material resources, including appropriate office attire. The material surroundings of the office space may be intimidating and unfamiliar. Yet, adults occupy office spaces on an everyday basis and are entirely familiar with the language and dress. This comment highlights the way that norms and hierarchies in particular spaces can lead adults to feel confident, while young people feel unconfident in their ability to participate (Cornwall 2004; Kesby 2007). Such spaces may give young people the impression that they must “adultify” or “pass as adult” in order to participate (Hartung 2017).

The Four Roles of NGO Practitioners in Supporting Youth Participation

In this section, I discuss four key roles that NGO practitioners can play as collaborators, guides, facilitators, and advocates in participatory initiatives. By occupying these various roles in different spaces and contexts, practitioners can support the distanciation of the resources, discourses, and practices that enable young people’s participation in intergenerational spaces. Table 1 briefly summarises each role, as well as the spaces that NGO practitioners perform each role in, and who they work with when they are playing each role.

Table 1 The four roles NGO practitioners can play to support youth participation
Full size table

Collaborators: Working with Young People and Responding to Their Interests and Needs

Interviewees suggested that NGO practitioners should respond to young people’s needs and interests and aim to ensure that participatory initiatives are relevant and beneficial to young people:

We’d jump on music festivals and things like that, because you’d have to find things that were exciting and, you know, something that they want to do, and they just happened to be learning about sexual and reproductive health on the side. (Interviewee 9. Interview with Annie Douglas. July 12, 2018.)

We should really be focused on things like how they participate in school and how they participate in their work, or how they participate in factories, or how they participate in families. (Interviewee 4. Interview with Annie Douglas. June 13, 2018.)

Rather than trying to invite young people to a central point where we are, there has to be some way of going to them... So, if you’ve got all the young men in the community at the local pool table playing pool, then go to them there rather than saying “we’re having a meeting at the organisation’s offices on this day and this time, come and we’ll provide you transport and we’ll give you something to eat” (Interviewee 3. Interview with Annie Douglas. June 7, 2018.)

The interviewees highlight that NGO practitioners can play important roles as collaborators, working with young people and responding to their needs. The interviewees demonstrate the importance of being reflexive and “putting” themselves in young people’s “shoes” to ensure that opportunities to participate are beneficial, interesting, and relevant. They show awareness that NGOs have their own aims for participatory initiatives and that these aims may not align with young people’s own life priorities. The interviewees suggest that it is important to engage young people in the everyday spaces that they already occupy, for example, music festivals, school, work or factories, and the local pool table. This is juxtaposed with the usual approach of asking young people to meet at a “central point” like an NGO office space, which young people tend to find unfamiliar and intimidating.

In particular, the second interviewee’s comment questions whether youth participation, particularly in decision-making initiatives, is at all relevant or interesting for young people. However, it is important to remember that some of the young people’s projects and reasons for participating will be missed or misunderstood by NGO practitioners (Lohmeyer 2020). Practitioners should make an attempt to understand young people’s reasons for participating and ensure that projects benefit young people. However, they should avoid being too hasty in judging that an initiative has absolutely no benefit or relevance to young people, as they will never have perfect information as to why young people choose whether to participate.

Guides: Supporting Young People on a Journey to Participating in Intergenerational Spaces

The interviewees emphasise that NGO practitioners can play a guidance role, supporting young people in youth initiative spaces so that they can eventually participate in decision-making spaces with adults:

Unless you’re working with young people that already have some skills and capacity in that space and feel quite confident speaking with adults, I wouldn’t take a leap straight into those very formal, powered, structured spaces. It has to be an incremental and very intentional series of processes before you get there. (Interviewee 3. Interview with Annie Douglas. June 7, 2018.)

A fifteen-year-old girl from a very poor family… you’re not going to find her working in these [participatory] projects because she’s just too timid. But if she’s involved in other projects over a few years and slowly her confidence, self-belief and other skills improve, then maybe she works in the project later on. So, building blocks are important, having youth work with other youth, that’s about developing their own skills. (Interviewee 7. Interview with Annie Douglas. June 28, 2018.)

Often the argument that young people don’t have the experience and don’t know what to say, well, it’s because young people haven’t been given the experience to test out their ideas… [A] way to empower them is by helping them along their journey, so that they can get to those formal meetings and they can speak to whatever it is that they know about because we’ve supported them in trialling things in a structured way (Interviewee 1. Interview with Annie Douglas. May 17, 2018.).

The interviewees suggest that in their role as a guide, they can support young people to “work with other youth” and trial things “in a structured way” in youth initiative spaces. The NGO practitioners facilitate a process where young people are able to deploy the necessary resources to participate in increasingly challenging environments, with a particular focus on improving their “skills”, “confidence”, and “self-belief.” This might involve teaching young people about community and social issues, having them practice articulating views in discussions with their peers, and practicing public speaking (Percy-Smith 2018).

Importantly, interviewees highlight the “intentional” and also “incremental” nature of this “journey”, that may occur “over a few years.” The interviewees therefore argue that NGO practitioners can play an important role in identifying the resources that are available to young people and supporting young people to gradually develop them over time. It is important for facilitators to be reflexive and ask themselves whether this “journey” is beneficial or interesting to the young person. However, some young people may welcome the opportunity and may appreciate NGO practitioners playing this guidance role (Mannion 2009; Hartung 2017). By supporting young people to move from confidently participating in youth initiative spaces to confidently participating in intergenerational spaces, practitioners can contribute to a process of distanciation (Kesby 2007). They facilitate a gradual and incremental extension of the circumstances and environments in which young people are able to participate (Kesby 2007).

Facilitators: Tactfully Managing Intergenerational Participatory Spaces

Interviewees suggested that NGO practitioners can play a critical facilitating role in intergenerational participatory spaces to ensure that young people are confident in their ability to participate alongside adults. For example, some interviewees identified that when only a few young people are invited to participate in adult-dominated spaces, they tend to feel outnumbered. Interviewees therefore highlighted the importance of having a large group of young people participate in intergenerational spaces:

You can see that young people have power in numbers, completely. (Interviewee 1. Interview with Annie Douglas. May 17, 2018.)

I think that in a one-on-one or two-on-two or two-on-ten kind of dynamic, that it’s extremely difficult for young people to assert any kind of power into that space, so I think that numbers are really important. (Interviewee 3. Interview with Annie Douglas. June 7, 2018.)

I think that numbers is really important to ensuring that young people feel safe in a space and have confidence. When you can get hundreds of young people together, it really creates this kind of opportunity. (Interviewee 5. Interview with Annie Douglas. June 15, 2018.)

In youth spaces, young people are able to draw on positive and collaborative relationships with their peers. Here, the interviewees suggest that this resource needs to be made available to them in spaces with adults. As facilitators, NGO practitioners can therefore contribute to the distanciation of this resource beyond youth spaces and into intergenerational participatory spaces (Kesby 2007).

Some interviewees also suggested that NGO practitioners should hold meetings in a space or place that enables young people’s participation:

It might be about…sitting in a circle…or having something happen on turf that’s really familiar. So, having it happen outside… But I think it is about making sure they feel safe in the meetings or decision-making arenas. (Interviewee 1. Interview with Annie Douglas. May 17, 2018.)

It’s much harder to sit down in an office and make that a youth-friendly space, than it is to be outside or at a café. (Interviewee 3. Interview with Annie Douglas. June 7, 2018.)

The material surroundings of an office space or traditional community decision-making space tend to be unfamiliar to young people. These spaces reflect particular norms, forms of power, and hierarchies where adults dominate. However, spaces such as outdoor areas or cafes can be “youth-friendly” or “turf that is really familiar.” One interviewee also mentioned that facilitators could suggest sitting in a circle. This disrupts traditional spatial dynamics between adults and young people, for example, where community leaders stand at the front of the room and speak to an audience of young people, or where teachers are located at the front of the classroom. It therefore helps to decentre traditional positions of adult community members who instruct, dictate, or command young people in their dominant roles as carers, educators, and community leaders (Percy-Smith 2006; Mannion 2009).

While practitioners may be able to distanciate the resources that enable young people’s empowered participation into intergenerational participatory spaces, young people may find that they are unable to participate in everyday spaces when facilitators are no longer present. Therefore, enabling youth participation means distanciating resources beyond the life cycle of the initiative (Kesby 2007). This can be very difficult to achieve, but some interviewees highlighted the importance of challenging the norms and discourses that govern everyday, adult-dominated spaces.

Advocates: Working with Adult Community Members to Transform Everyday Spaces

Most of the interviewees identified that a crucial step towards enabling young people’s participation is to challenge norms in everyday, intergenerational spaces. For instance, some interviewees commented:

Engaging community leaders and having regular conversations about the value of the work that’s being done not only gives you access, but that environment becomes more accommodating of young people taking on those leadership roles. (Interviewee 9. Interview with Annie Douglas. July 12, 2018)

You have to work with others in the community to change perceptions that they have of young people… engage faith leaders, local government and community leaders, village chiefs, mums and dads, teachers, health workers, who we want to shift perceptions in. (Interviewee 3. Interview with Annie Douglas. June 7, 2018.)

[It’s] about a slow build of two aspects; of bringing the community in around what it means for young people to participate…and also working with the young people to show leadership in a positive way. Then the community can see, “wow this youth participation has led to positive things…we want to see more of that.” (Interviewee 8. Interview with Annie Douglas. July 5, 2018.)

The interviewees suggest that NGO practitioners can play a role as advocates, challenging and destabilising the social norm that young people should be “seen and not heard.” As one interviewee suggests, this advocacy involves working with “faith leaders, local government and community leaders, and village chiefs” as well as “mums and dads, teachers, and health workers” to shift perceptions. Attitudinal change at both the cultural and individual levels is critical to ensuring more supportive and equal relationships between young people and adult community members (Gallagher 2006). This advocacy can also provide NGOs with the necessary “access” to communities which allows them to work with young people and adults on participatory initiatives.

As one interviewee commented, “working with young people to show leadership in a positive way” can facilitate unique interactions between adults and young people that challenge traditional perspectives. This can cause adults to rethink young people’s potential to make positive contributions to the community. There is therefore potential for a decentring of traditional positions of adult community members and a repositioning as supporters and co-inquirers with young people (Percy-Smith 2006; Mannion 2009). The interviewee, therefore, emphasises young people’s agency and critical role in shaping the views, behaviours, and roles of adults (Mannion 2009).

However, interviewees argue that this advocacy is best approached tactfully and respectfully. They describe this process as a “slow build” which involves “regular conversations” with adults in the community. The implication is that if NGO practitioners try to progress advocacy efforts too quickly, adult community members may become oppositional. This emphasises that adult community members will have their own projects or reasons for choosing whether to participate in intergenerational initiatives. It is critical that NGO practitioners mediate their own project, young people’s parallel projects, as well as adult community members’ parallel projects, in order for initiatives to succeed in enabling young people’s participation (Lohmeyer 2020).

NGO practitioners who may be outsiders, and do not belong to the communities that they work in, need to be particularly sensitive. They must avoid challenging norms in a patronising or condemnatory way. Interviewees highlighted that their advocacy should take a positive frame, and should focus on making a case for the value of youth participation. A number of interviewees also suggested that each community is different. It is therefore important to try to understand norms and attitudes specific to a particular community and challenge homogenous ideas about norms and attitudes in the Global South. Also, NGO practitioners should not assume that all traditional knowledge or community ways of working are necessarily dominating or exclusive. While interviewees spoke from their perspectives as outsiders, some interviewees also suggested that this advocate role can also be played by adults who are part of the community, such as supportive teachers or government workers.

The norms and discourses that position adults as dominant will not only exist in traditional decision-making spaces, such as government and community spaces but also in the church, home, school, health clinics, and hospitals, as suggested by the first interviewee’s comment. A destabilising of the norms that govern intergenerational spaces can lead to changes in the discourses and practices in such spaces (Gallagher 2006; Kesby 2007). As the first interviewee comment suggests the spaces or “environments” then become “more accommodating.” The discourses, practices, and interactions between young people and adults will become more conducive to young people’s participation.

Conclusion

In this paper, I argue that a spatial lens is critical to understanding the complex youth participation issues that NGO practitioners must navigate in their work. NGO practitioners face a key dilemma in that they seek to promote youth participation in development initiatives, in line with their organisation’s aims and goals. However, this is challenging to achieve in communities where young people are expected to refrain from voicing their views, and the social norm is that young people should be “seen and not heard.” Additionally, as interviewees suggested, young people may not be interested, or see benefit, in participating.

This key dilemma unfolds in social space. Adult-dominated spaces, such as traditional decision-making spaces, are governed by norms, discourses, and practices that limit young people’s participation (Gallagher 2006; Mannion 2009). Young people may feel that they are unable to speak freely, or may become frustrated when their views are ignored or rebuked by adults in such spaces (Kesby 2007; Duramy and Gal 2020). NGOs tend to invite young people to participate in adult-dominated spaces, such as office spaces. Young people may feel that they cannot deploy the necessary discursive or material resources, such as jargon or professional attire, to participate in these spaces (Kesby 2005). They may also feel that these opportunities to participate are intimidating or boring. Even when young people feel comfortable participating in youth initiative spaces, there is an issue of distanciation, as the discourses, practices, and resources that enable them to participate are not available outside of these carefully controlled initiative spaces (Kesby 2007).

I argue that NGO practitioners can play four key roles in participatory initiatives. As collaborators, they can respond to young people’s needs to ensure that initiatives are relevant, and held in suitable spaces. As guides, NGO practitioners can support young people on a journey of building resources (such as skills, relationships, and knowledge). In doing so, they gradually extend the environments in which young people feel comfortable to participate. As facilitators, NGO practitioners can tactfully manage intergenerational participatory spaces to ensure that young people can participate alongside adults. Finally, as advocates, they can work alongside adult community members, and challenge norms that underpin the discourses, practices, and interactions in adult-dominated spaces.

In this paper, I build on the increasing focus on space, place, and geography within youth studies (e.g., Farrugia and Wood 2017; Farrugia and Ravn 2022), with a particular emphasis on how a spatial lens can develop our understanding of youth participation. While this study is focused on an international development context, the findings can also be applied more broadly by adult practitioners working on any sort of youth participation initiative. By taking on these various roles, in different spaces and contexts, adult practitioners can contribute to the distanciation of the discourses, practices, and resources that enable young people’s empowered participation in intergenerational spaces with adults.