OECD Consultation: Building Citizen Centred Policies & Services - Groupes virtuels - Communauté

Message

De:	"Fiona McKenzie" [ Profil ]
Sujet:	Re: [OECD-CCPS] Welcome to the E-Consultation
Envoyé:	May 13th, 2008 - 14:00:04

	Hi all, I've come to this a little late so please excuse the slightly late answers. My name is Fiona, I'm 24 and currently live in London although I'm originally from New Zealand. I currently work for the Church of England as a policy assistant but I've previously worked as the National Youth Coordinator for a New Zealand Political Party. I also stood as a candidate at the NZ General Election in 2005 (for the same political party) and prior to that volunteered on the NZ Ministry of Youth Affairs Youth Advisory Forum and my City Council Youth Focus Group. Right so to the questions... 1. Do you feel the views of young people are sufficiently included in designing public policy? What are the barriers to participation? This is something that I've been campaigning on for years because frankly I don't think the views of young people are included in designing public policy. There seems to be two main reasons for this - a) Consulting young people on public policy is a bit of a hard task for politicians and unlike business groups and unions there is lack of one or a few unifying groups. While business groups and unions tend to lobby politicians hard, with a strength in numbers, young people lack a similar agency with such strength or power. The Ministry of Youth Development in New Zealand tries very hard to be involved in public policy decisions that affect young people BUT it's impossible to get everywhere for a small department (it was sub-sumed into the Ministry of Social Development a few years ago) and young people have such a wide variety of views on everything that there is little chance that they can be consulted in any thorough way on everything because of the larger stronger lobbying groups. b) Young people are often quite apathetic today. While many of us are trying to help lead the charge on global and local issues, there are so many more who have no idea that there are these issues or that they could have an opinion on them. Getting young people motivated to want to be involved in public policy decisions is really more difficult than I ever expected and part of the reason I stood as a candidate at the election was to encourage young people to get involved in politics. It worked quite well but there's so many more who didn't care what decisions were made. The barriers to participation that I haven't mentioned yet are the socio-economic ones. I'm seriously generalising here but the young people that get involved in New Zealand are the well-educated with middle-to-high income families who have the time to get involved and who don't spend their non-school waking hours working to help with the costs of their families. They're passionate about it and take action because they have families which are able to support them both financially and emotionally. There are other young people who don't fit this stereotype but they seem few and far between - at least in New Zealand. In developing countries I can imagine the need to survive and help with the family/community being more important than working on public policy and that's a problem because these young people are the ones that know exactly what the problems are and are trying their hardest to affect change at the local/family level. Their input is hugely important but not sought out. Lastly it's geography - if public policy is made in one place then the chance of small groups of young people, or even individuals, getting a chance to have a say if they live outside the region/city is rather low. 2. What steps can governments take to facilitate greater youth participation? Governments need to see young people in the same way they see business groups, unions, and the older generations. Those over the age of 50 in New Zealand have an organisation called Grey Power which represents them at a national level and ensures that this age group has a voice on the public policy table. There is no one similar organisation for the young people and no Government seems to think that one is necessary. I firmly believe it is. While young people are a diverse group and have many differing views on issues - one national group representing them and lobbying on their behalf would help Governments to take them seriously. Dealing with apathy is more difficult. Politicians need to encourage young people to get involved in politics. I got involved because two politicians asked me to help start a youth wing for their party. From there I was encouraged to continue and lots of doors were opened for me because they wanted young people to be involved. Politicians who firmly believe in young people and the value that they bring to politics are the only way things will change. From there it's up to us - we need to encourage everyone we know, and get them to encourage everyone they know, to get involved in their communities and in the areas that they are interested in/passtionate about. I spent a bit of time travelling around schools and universities across New Zealand talking to young people about the decisions made by politicians and so many of them had no idea that these issues existed or could be debated. Information needs to be spread by young people for young people in ways that young people understand. A public discussion document issued by a Government department is not typical reading for a 15 year old and so they don't read it. Governments need to be prepared to discuss public policy in ways that young people understand and can see how it affects them because without that very few young people will want to get involved. Lastly I really believe that teaching "civics" (political process and practice) in schools would really help. It's not specifically taught in New Zealand and it's hindering peoples' understanding of how things work. Ok that's me - I'm sorry for the length of this and I do hope it vaguely helps somehow. Thanks to the OECD for doing this e-consultation! Cheers, Fiona

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