the-commons : Message: SV: [The Commons] "Youth and Development. " - World Bank Report

Eric,

1. Under what conditions does YLD work best, or worst?

What is YLD?

2. What sorts of issues are most successfully dealt with, and what issues are poorly handled by young people? (ie entrepreneurial, social, environmental, political)

As a young man, I was a potential member of the Everything Immediately Party. My heart was pounding with compassion and rage but my understanding for slow social processes and economic forces left a lot to be desired. Nowadays I also realise that as an inexperienced youngster, I was an easy prey for fashionable explanations and media focus priority, even though there was a basic and still lasting engagement for some core issues.

3. Are successful actions exclusively locally oriented?

Successful to whom? Mi abomenas burokratan perspektivon where the "youth" are seen as some kind of clients to be served or - even worse - dealt with by government officials. The opposite perspective should be the obvious elirpunkto where government is democratic, i.e. put in place by the citizens, engaged by the citizens to serve the citizens. A successful action to me is an action where the people engaged act as powerful and responsible democratic citizens and have no reason and no inclination to relate to government or burocrats in a maniero humila.

4. At what age does it become useful to engage young people in YLD?

In Sweden a normal age limit for membership in a political youth organization is 14 years. A friend of mine told me about their local CUF (centre=agrarian green youth federation) association that organised a dance, booked the village convention house, printed posters, hired professional musicians and brought youngsters from the nearby city centre of Ume� to the village by chartered busses. The companies dealing with them were astonished to find that although large sums of money were exchanged in the transactions, the eldest representative of the organiser was my friend, chairman, 17, and the secretary, 16. Evidente, they were backed by the CUF national federation as well as by the local centre party organisation, of which the youth association was an integral part with equal voting rights, but neither of these was involved and did not even know about the event until afterwards, which was quite all right according to the rules. At that time, this kind of arrangement was a matter of course and never in need of any �"youth development programme" or whatever. Running the centre youth association was simply considered to be a step in the democratic education of village citizens.

5. Do more successful ideas and organizations come �top down� or �bottom up�?

We really should not need to answer that one.

6. Are young people more successful if they engage in partnership with public-sector institutions? � or with other established private (NGO) institutions?

What do you mean by partnership? The English term "NGO" is totally inadequate in describing what in Sweden used to be known as a folkr�relse (people's movement). NGO is defined by means of a negation, while the Folkr�relse definition is literally dynamic. One example of a folkr�relse event was described above under (4).

As students we were probing the rural area planning process in the municipality of Pite�, some 200 km north of Ume�, and visited the village of Lillpite, in 1980. Out of 800 inhabitants, around 50 were individual members of the Lillpite centre party association, another 50 were individual members of the Lillpite centre women's association and probably about 10 were individual members of the Infj�rden CUF, i.e. inner firth centre youth association of Pite� (municipality), spanning about ten villages. "Democracy is a way of life".

The Lillpite social democratic association was not quite as strong, and some of their members were collective members through the local trade union. (The Lillpite village council was not based on individual memberships but on property location, according to Swedish custom, but they still found the local engagement to restore an old water mill including financing it during our study).

Nobody from top ever told any of those associations whom they should get into partnerships with. They themselves decided what they wanted to do to advance society, they found their own partners, and if any local bureaucrats turned out to be a nuisance or inefficient in doing their job, the municipal council would be the first to know. The councillors, employers of the bureaucrats, were nominated by the members of these and similar associations, including the centre youth associations. If laws or central authorities were in the way of progress, the contact with the local centre party or social democratic Member of Parliament was easy to take, he or she was of course engaged in local politics as well.

7. Is youth activism the exclusive purview of relatively wealthy and well-educated youths?

Ne en profunda demokratio.

8. What is required to engage or encourage participation among the young poor?

A real good old fashioned folkr�relse aiming to turn society upside down in order to build a new world and seriously trying to educate people in the process to make them join in.

Amike vin salutas

# :-)
Martin

-----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
Fr�n: the-commons@yahoogroups.com [mailto:the-commons@yahoogroups.com] F�r Eric Britton
Skickat: den 9 september 2005 10:54
Till: the-commons@yahoogroups.com; Childs-play@yahoogroups.com
�mne: [The Commons] "Youth and Development. " - World Bank Report - a bit URGENT!!!

Dear Friends and youth activists:

As you may have heard, the World Bank plans to publish its 2007 World Development Report on the theme of Youth and Development.

I am scheduled to meet the people drafting the report � which, because of publishing schedules, has to be ready in draft form early in 2006! � on September 19th. So I have been corresponding with some of the officers working on it, and today, have received this remarkable letter, inviting answers to a series of very challenging questions. The letter is very encouraging to all of us interested in YLD as he mentions that the Bank is �committed to the idea that young people can be agents of their own development�� Also he acknowledges that he - and thus probably the Bank - are �approaching this issue from a position of complete ignorance.� and thus, he asks me to help him answer what I believe are just the right kinds of questions we should be asking ourselves about YLD.

Because you provided what, in our assessment, the best, most imaginative YLD Project proposals through our Taking IT Global appeal for projects ahead of this year�s World Youth Congress, I am writing to you in the hope that you will assist me in developing him answers to them:

1.      Under what conditions does YLD work best, or worst?

2.      What sorts of issues are most successfully dealt with, and what issues are poorly handled by young people? (ie entrepreneurial, social, environmental, political)

3.      Are successful actions exclusively locally oriented?

4.      At what age does it become useful to engage young people in YLD?

5.      Do more successful ideas and organizations come �top down� or �bottom up�?

6.      Are young people more successful if they engage in partnership with public-sector institutions? � or with other established private (NGO) institutions?

7.      Is youth activism the exclusive purview of relatively wealthy and well-educated youths?

8.      What is required to engage or encourage participation among the young poor?

Please send your answers directly to me BEFORE SUNDAY 18TH SEPTEMBER!!   You might also like to answer a final question which is the generic one we address at each of our World Youth Congresses:

What is the most effective role for young people in development?

But please, think �Hard evidence� � �Case Studies� � �Facts� � �Statistics.� It would be so easy for you to write breezy, esoteric answers to these questions based on your fantasies of what YLD ought to be. Pointless. No help at all. What we need is the hard, factual stories of what you have done to back up ever answer you give.

I will prepare a digest of your answers and send it to all of you who answer me � along with the results of the meeting I have with Mattias in Washington on 20/22 September.

thanks for your help

Sincerely

David Woollcombe

From: Mattias K.A. Lundberg
Development Economics Research Group
World Bank
7 SEP 2005   10.31 EST

Dear David,

Many thanks for your kind note, and your offer to make time to meet with us. I would be grateful for the opportunity to meet, to learn from your experience, especially on youth-led development. We are committed to the idea that, as Juan Felipe has said, young people can be agents of their own development.

What we really need in the WDR is more hard evidence -- whether anecdotal or systematic, including successes and failures -- of experience with youth-led development. The WDR is really an operational document, presenting solid recommendations derived from robust evidence. So I would be enormously grateful for any information that you could give us on a range of questions, such as

1.      Under what conditions does YLD work best, or worst?

2.      What sorts of issues are most successfully dealt with, and what issues are poorly handled by young people? (ie entrepreneurial, social, environmental, political)

3.      Are successful actions exclusively locally oriented?

4.      At what age does it become useful to engage young people in YLD?

5.      Do more successful ideas and organizations come �top down� or �bottom up�?

6.      Are young people more successful if they engage in partnership with public-sector institutions? � or with other established private (NGO) institutions?

7.      Is youth activism the exclusive purview of relatively wealthy and well-educated youths?

8.      What is required to engage or encourage participation among the young poor?

I realise this is a broad range of questions, but in my (fairly shallow) reading of the literature, there's rather little evidence on any of these issues � at least little that has been compiled in any systematic way.

So I'm approaching this issue from a position of complete ignorance � not biased by prior knowledge. Thus I'm also eager for any light that you can shed on these issues. I look forward to meeting you in a few weeks' time.

Mattias
___________________________________
Mattias K.A. Lundberg
Development Economics Research Group

------ End of Forwarded Message

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