Tim's Blog

There are 2 events with the theme of 'engaging hard to reach young people'...

At event 1 there are 10 practitioners all who have successfully worked with a variety of hard to reach groups for over 10 years, and there are 5 people who have run exceptional projects with hard to reach groups for 20 years+

At event 2 there are 15 youth workers, none of who have been responsible for developing or running a project with hard to reach young people - however all of them have brought some young people with them.

If you want to learn how best to effectively engage hard to reach young people which will you choose?

I don't disagree with any of the reasons given - but I do disagree with tokenism and I think that currently there is a lot of it.

I also have a problem with events and organisations that turn out the same 'old' young people and get the 'young person thing' covered that way! - Like these represent 'any' young person!

To me the real issue is discrimination. Its wrong for young people not to be involved because of their age. Its also wrong to be involved just because of their age. What should count is what they can contribute.

Of course ideally you want young people that can contribute at events - they're much richer for it - but I don't think events should be written off just because there aren't some young faces. If you're young and you have something to offer your age shouldn't restrict you from attending (and this includes consideration to age related restrictions like the time of the week, costs & so on) - but just being young is not enough.

The other thing I dislike thats related to this is the 'them' & 'us' situation it creates - it devalues peoples opinions if they are above a certain age (and what age is that by the way?!) - what I'm interested in is people of all ages working together to find the best solutions for children & young people - your age does not matter - what you have to contribute does!