Planning for the Unexpected: Barriers to Young People's Participation in Planning in Disadvantaged Communities

Abstract

This paper discusses barriers to civic engagement of disadvantaged young people that we observed in the course of a child-friendly city project in Turkey. It also emphasizes the importance of being prepared to overcome such barriers, some of which were quite unexpected. Results show that many of the unexpected issues are the outcome of poverty, illiteracy, lack of ethics, inexperience of project managers, conflicting political interests and sense of insecurity. The paper concludes with suggestions for researchers and policy-makers on how to overcome such unforeseen barriers to child and youth participation in disadvantaged communities.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to express his sincere thanks to Professor Fahriye Sancar for her guidance and efforts during the implementation phase of this project and her valuable contributions to this manuscript. The author is also grateful to Professor Louise Chawla for reviewing this paper and for her helpful suggestions. Thanks also go to Alea Richmond and Alison Burrows for editing this manuscript, the members of the Young Volunteers Association for helping with the realization of this project, and Dr Shin Lee and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and insights.

Funding

This project was supported by a grant from the European Union [TR 0803.03].