NGO reflections on putting the youth first: improving youth participation in development practice

ABSTRACT

There are 1.21 billion young people globally, and the majority are living in the Global South. Empowering young people to participate in development decision-making can make young people feel engaged, and enables programs to more effectively meet their needs. This qualitative study explores challenges and approaches to facilitating youth participation through interviews with a small sample of NGO practitioners. Recommendations for improving youth participation, that emerged from the interviews, include that NGOs should have constructive dialogue with donors around the value of youth participation, take more flexible and creative approaches, and formalise strategies that prioritise participation.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth
• participation
• NGOs

Introduction

Youth participation can facilitate the realisation of young peoples’ rights, can have positive effects on young people’s personal development, and can improve policies and services (Head 2011; Trivelli and Morel 2021). Yet, research shows that young people tend to be systematically excluded from decision-making, both in the Global North and South, at organisational, community and national levels (Hinton 2008; Trivelli and Morel 2021). The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child explicitly states that children and young people should have the ability to express their views and have these views meaningfully considered (United Nations 1989). Youth participation has become particularly pertinent because there is a large youth population. This present generation of young people is the largest in history, with estimates indicating that there are now approximately 1.21 billion young people between 15 and 24 years of age, and they account for 15.5 per cent of the global population, with the vast majority living in the Global South (United Nations 2020). This large youth population is often referred to as a “youth bulge” in development policies and strategies (DfID 2016; United Nations 2020; USAID 2022). Projections suggest that this cohort will reach 1.29 billion (15.1 per cent of the world total) by 2030 and almost 1.34 billion (13.8 per cent of the overall population) by 2050 (United Nations 2020). The United Nations defines youth as those persons aged between 15 and 24 years (United Nations 2020). However, youth sociologists tend to understand youth as a transition phase between the full dependency of childhood and the independence of adulthood (Furlong 2012). This emphasis on youth as socially constructed is helpful for conceptualising how different cultures have diverse understandings of youth. It is therefore particularly useful for international development practitioners working across various contexts. The term “young people” refers to individuals who are in this transition phase.

Although there are a number of strong rationales for youth participation in development, writers suggest that there are few examples in practice that have genuinely empowered young people in decision-making (Hinton 2008; Lansdown 2006; Trivelli and Morel 2021). The lack of good practice case studies in the field suggests a need to research the challenges that prevent young people from actively participating. This article presents selected findings from a broader research project which aimed to understand the challenges and approaches that NGO practitioners consider important to facilitating youth participation in international development practice. It is valuable to explore the unique perspectives of NGO practitioners. They play an intermediary role, occupying a position between donors and youth participants and working closely with both groups to implement youth programs. NGO practitioners can be considered brokers or bridge-builders (Mueller-Hirth 2012). They “employ and circulate” meanings and practices of participation during design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation activities, and in their interactions with donors, partner organisations and program beneficiaries (Mueller-Hirth 2012, 652).

The qualitative study involved conducting semi-structured interviews with nine NGO and development practitioners. The aim was to understand their stories and experiences as program facilitators of youth participation. This article will explore the key approaches that interviewees identified as important to overcoming these challenges. Particularly, the approaches included NGO organisational, structural and strategic change, as well as organisational leadership. These approaches were recommended by interviewees to ensure that initiatives realise the value and benefits of facilitating youth participation. In the following sections, this article will discuss the relevant literature, present the research findings, discuss findings and provide analysis with respect to the literature, and identify implications and future areas for research.

Youth and development

Young people are significantly impacted by issues including employment, education, conflict and peacebuilding, and action on climate change (Pruitt 2020; Thew, Middlemiss, and Paavola 2022; Trivelli and Morel 2021). In terms of employment challenges, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated difficulties for young people. Compared with older generations, young people between 15 and 24 years of age have experienced a significantly higher percentage loss of employment since 2020 (International Labour Organization 2022). Youth unemployment rates are predicted to return to pre-pandemic levels in high income countries, but remain more than one percentage point above pre-pandemic levels in low- and middle-income countries (International Labour Organization 2022). With respect to education challenges, the COVID-19 pandemic has also had a serious impact. Having experienced disruptions to education, including school closures, this generation of children and young people are likely to experience long-term impacts from learning losses (International Labour Organization 2022). In conflict situations, young people experience disproportionate impacts, as they often face inequity, recruitment pressures and lack of access to decision-making (Pruitt 2020). Young people will experience the most severe impacts of climate change if decision-makers do not take action to reduce emissions (Thew, Middlemiss, and Paavola 2022).

However, young people do not passively experience, but actively respond to these key issues that impact their lives. For example, Pruitt (2021) highlighted that there is a growing body of literature on young people and youth-based organisations engaging in transformative actions to promote peace, including through creative approaches to awareness-raising and advancing structural change. Another example is young people’s participation in climate strikes across the globe (Han and Ahn 2020). Young people have brought lawsuits against governments and fossil fuel industries in countries including Colombia, the US and Pakistan (Han and Ahn 2020).

Despite that young people are leading their own initiatives in response to these key issues, many governments and donors only seek out young people’s engagement on issues that they perceive as “youth-related”, such as sports and volunteering (Trivelli and Morel 2021). This reflects a lack of understanding that young people are affected by a diverse range of issues and policies. It also reflects a lack of acknowledgement of young people’s ability to take action on such issues. Governments and donors often encourage participation in youth conferences and forums, where young people are expected to listen to government representatives and officials talk about youth policies and issues, rather than actively participate in decision-making on such matters (Kwon 2019). Young people therefore tend to be considered objects of policies and programs, rather than agents who influence the decisions on a range of initiatives that affect them (Trivelli and Morel 2021). This is particularly the case for young people who face multiple barriers, including young women, young people with disabilities, young people from ethnic or cultural minorities, and rural youth (Pruitt 2021; Trivelli and Morel 2021).

Participation and its problems

It became widely acknowledged that it is important to encourage participation from program beneficiaries and marginalised groups following the criticisms that first emerged in the 1970s of top-down approaches to development (Chambers 1983; Cornwall 2008; Hickey and Mohan 2005). Participation was “the pantheon of development buzzwords” in the 1980s and 1990s and many have argued that participation had become divorced from its radical and political roots (Leal 2007, 539). Development organisations may claim to empower local people through participatory approaches, but in fact it is the organisations that possess the power because of their authority to define development priorities. This approach can instead reinforce hierarchies and may result in an illegitimate or unjust use of power (Cooke and Kothari 2001; Makuwira 2018). A number of scholars have developed useful typologies to distinguish more tokenistic or instrumental forms of participation, which seek to achieve efficiency and cost-effectiveness, from transformative and empowering forms (Cornwall 2008; Pretty 1995; White 1996). Tokenism can mean that beneficiaries are not sufficiently empowered to engage with and genuinely influence the decisions that affect them.

Donors have the power to define priorities of development initiatives because they have control of funding (Lister 2000; Mount 2022; Reith 2010). There are many different types of donors, including donor organisations such as bilateral donors, corporates, grant-making foundations and churches, as well as individual members of the public (Lister 2000; Reith 2010). This article discusses the role of donor organisations, though individual donors and members of the public can be a key stakeholder in such organisations. Cooley and Ron (2002) argued that an “NGO scramble” has eventuated where it has become increasingly competitive to secure funding. Donors are able to define priorities and select the NGOs which develop proposals that best align with priorities (Mount 2022; Reith 2010; Wallace, Bornstein, and Chapman 2006). Many NGOs are conscious that if not them, there will be another organisation that is willing to compromise on its agenda, or meet “tick-box” requirements, in order to chase the money (Mount 2022; Reith 2010; Wallace, Bornstein, and Chapman 2006).

Different donors may have different approaches and considerations for setting their agendas. NGOs often struggle to keep up with the ever-changing nature of these priorities (Mount 2022). Bilateral donors, corporates and grant-making foundations may set agendas around contributing to goals of international frameworks and agreements, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (Sander 2021). Generally speaking, bilateral donors must also demonstrate accountability to tax-payers, and are therefore conscious of public views and sentiment (Makuwira 2018). Some organisations will be set up with a particular mission and values. For example, church groups and some international NGOs have a set of religious values that guide their approaches and agendas. Grant-making foundations may have particular missions and values, such as feminist funds that focus particularly on gender equality and women’s empowerment (Bashi et al. 2018). Donors tend to impose certain conditions and requirements on NGOs, and guidelines on best practice are generally set by institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. While some NGOs and scholars challenge the way that particular donor-imposed requirements reinforce expert power and top-down priorities and hierarchies, it is also important to note that some requirements exist because donors want to guarantee that programs positively contribute to the lives of beneficiaries and do not cause harm. For example, through the use of robust risk mitigation measures to ensure the safety of staff and beneficiaries, and financial accountability measures to ensure that funds are spent responsibly.

Despite best efforts to achieve equal, mutual and transparent partnerships, often recipient organisations find that power asymmetries with donors exist due to the one-way cash flow and donors’ imposition of their agendas (Sander 2021; Olawoore and Kamruzzaman 2019). Some argue that NGO dependency on funding has resulted in increasing pressure of upward accountability to donors at the expense of participatory approaches that are necessary to ensure downward accountability to beneficiaries and local partners (Hickey and Mohan 2005; Mount 2022; Olawoore and Kamruzzaman 2019). This pressure to balance upward and downward accountability reflects the role that NGO practitioners play as intermediaries, brokers and bridge-builders (Mueller-Hirth 2012). NGOs may either internalise donor priorities or avoid challenging them, even though they may not be ideologically aligned, which can lead to “mission creep” (Mount 2022; Wallace, Bornstein, and Chapman 2006). However, a number of studies highlight that, in response to donor-imposed priorities, NGOs may take steps including refusing to comply with or attempting to adapt requirements (Sander 2021; Sou 2021), being selective about their donors, or avoiding conventional funding avenues altogether (Mason and Niewolny 2021; Olawoore and Kamruzzaman 2019).

NGO organisational structures and planning tools are often not enabling of participatory approaches (Wallace, Bornstein, and Chapman 2006). Some tools that are used to design initiatives tend to reduce and compartmentalise change into neat linear frameworks, such as log frames (Makuwira 2018; Reith 2010). While donors and NGOs may intend for these tools to provide a structure around achieving outcomes, and improve upwards accountability, this can be at the expense of flexibility, which is often necessary to respond to unforeseen external factors during the implementation of activities (Makuwira 2018; Reith 2010). This tendency towards professionalising and making development practice technical can result in a reauthorisation of experts, prioritising meeting donor expectations at the expense of participatory approaches and genuine collaboration with local partners (Kapoor 2005; Kothari 2005; Mount 2022; Sou 2021).

Research design and methodology

This research project sought to explore the stories and experiences of NGO practitioners as facilitators of youth participation. The study was conducted in 2018 and involved one hour long, one-on-one, semi-structured interviews with NGO practitioners who have worked on youth-targeted programs in development. Approval was obtained from the University of Melbourne’s human research ethics committee, and informed consent was gained from all participants. Participants were asked the pre-determined question, “What do you think are the main challenges to facilitating youth participation?”, and when they had identified a few of the main challenges, participants were asked open-ended follow-up questions that were specific to the challenges they had identified and allowed for exploration in further detail.

The study employed a snowball sampling technique in order to achieve the sample. Nine development practitioners with a background working with young people in youth-targeted international development programming were interviewed. Cumulatively, the nine participants had experience working at eight different NGOs or multilateral organisations (either Australia-based, or international organisations with Australian offices). Cumulatively, they had experience working on youth projects throughout the Asia Pacific region, including in Cambodia, Fiji, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Vanuatu, and Vietnam. The programs that the participants had worked on spanned a number of thematic areas including youth employment and vocational training, education, health, natural resource management, and advocacy and leadership.

The research took a thematic approach to analysis. Once the interview transcripts were coded for key themes, the frequency of themes, in terms of number of practitioners who mentioned, was recorded. The use of numbers in qualitative research is controversial (Maxwell 2010). This research adopts the view that numbers can be useful in making assertions including “some”, “usually”, and “most” more exact when referring to a theme that has been mentioned by the sample (Hammersley 1992). The use of numbers does not make a study quantitative or one of mixed methods, as this would involve testing hypotheses and understanding causal relationships between variables (Maxwell 2010). Numbers are instead used to provide supplementary information for better understanding of the qualitative data (Maxwell 2010). This study took an interpretivist approach, and the aim was to achieve in-depth exploration of a small number of practitioner perspectives (Carminati 2018). The aim was not to achieve a large, random sample and make generalisations based on the data (Carminati 2018).

It is a limitation of the research that young people themselves did not participate in the project. However, the insights from this project are valuable regarding strategies to improve youth participation because they highlight the perspectives of NGO practitioners as brokers and bridge-builders, who play a critical role in the implementation of youth programs, and work closely with both donors and young participants (Mueller-Hirth 2012). Where possible, the analysis introduces and discusses young people’s perspectives from other studies. Literature that highlights young people’s perspectives, as participants in development programs, is limited, so the analysis also draws on literature focused on young people’s participation in youth conferences.

Findings

The following sections discuss the findings, which emerged from interviews, around the key challenges and approaches to improving youth participation in development practice. The first section explores the key challenge that donors define priorities, and these priorities may not include youth participation. The second section highlights the approach that interviewees suggested to address this challenge, which is to promote constructive dialogue with donors and advocate for the importance of youth participation. The third section explores another key challenge to facilitating youth participation in development practice: that inflexible and linear approaches are not conducive to participation. The fourth and final section discusses the approaches that interviewees suggested to address this issue, which is to shift towards flexible structures and approaches to allow for more meaningful youth participation.

Challenge: donors define priorities

Most interviewees (six of nine) mentioned challenges related to donors’ lack of focus on youth participation. One participant explored this theme with respect to a donor that their organisation had received funding from:

The reality is that [the donor] doesn’t have a youth focus, so why would program staff consider engaging young people an important part of the work when your reporting is not necessarily going to demonstrate that the work that you’re doing is innovative or creating change? (Interviewee 1. Interview with Annie Douglas, 17 May 2018)

This reflection illustrates the significant impact that donor-imposed expectations have on the way that NGOs design and implement development work. This theme was reflected in the literature, in that NGOs find it difficult to implement approaches they perceive to be effective if it is not also a priority for the donor (Lister 2000; Mount 2022; Reith 2010; Sander 2021).

Most of the interviewees (five of nine) mentioned that donors tend to focus on measuring impact quantitatively in terms of the number of targeted individuals who benefit from a development program. Participants commented that:

You’ll get questions from [donors] like “your project has $100,000, you’re only working with 50 people, that’s a terrible cost per head ratio” … Very philosophically, if you want quality work … it actually takes time … resources, and you’ve got to work with smaller groups of people. (Interviewee 7. Interview with Annie Douglas, 18 June 2018)

If you compare a youth employment project, and the numbers of participants you can reach with a sanitation project that is providing toilets and sanitation training, that is not a fair comparison around the impact on people’s lives. (Interviewee 2. Interview with Annie Douglas, 5 June 2018)

The interviewees highlighted that donors tend to focus on ideas of impact around reaching a large number of beneficiaries. Some authors emphasise that donors tend to value quantitatively measurable change that can be achieved through rationalist management approaches (Lister 2000; Mount 2022; Sou 2021; Wallace, Bornstein, and Chapman 2006). The interviewees challenged this notion and argued that working intensively to empower a smaller number of people, using participatory approaches, can be as impactful as the sort of change that is more easily measured through quantitative methods. However, some interviewees went on to comment that NGO practitioners struggle to measure participation in alternative ways:

How do you measure that someone’s individual skills, confidence and capacity has increased? How do you measure that that has then led to young people being more influential in formal structures and power bases? (Interviewee 3. Interview with Annie Douglas, 7 June 2018)

If we really want to show and measure what value [programs] have, that sometimes can be harder, unless people believe innately that engaging young people in learning, or just decision-making, is in itself a good thing. And I can buy that argument, but it’s harder to get money from donors for it. (Interviewee 4. Interview with Annie Douglas, 13 June 2018)

These reflections emphasise the importance of evaluating impact, but also indicate that this is particularly difficult for youth participation work. The final comment reflects a key issue; the tensions between understanding participation as a means or an end in development, and different understandings of the value or purpose of facilitating youth participation. Cornwall (2008) highlighted instrumental forms of participation that focus on efficiency and cost effectiveness are an example of participation as a means, whereas transformative forms of participation focus on participation as an end of development. The interviewee comment suggests that NGO practitioners may see participation as an end because of its transformative impacts. Particularly, around building the capacity of young people and ensuring that they can access their rights. However, NGO practitioners may be concerned that donors prioritise the value of youth participation as an instrumental means to achieving donor-defined outcomes and efficiencies.

Approach: advocating for youth participation

Some interviewees emphasised the significance of donor commitment to youth participation in order to address challenges to facilitating youth participation in development. For example, some interviewees (three of nine) pointed to the importance of advocacy, and working with donors to understand the value of youth participation:

If NGOs could resource projects better, but at the same time not be expected to deliver these really … high numbers of people benefitting from a project, if you could change that thinking from donors and from institutions, that would be a great way to really increasing meaningful participation. (Interviewee 7. Interview with Annie Douglas, 28 June 2018)

I think the most important thing is that when working with a donor, you set up the relationship and the expectation in the right way … if you have a long-term larger donor … it’s a relationship that’s built up over time. Which means that you have the time to really invest in talking with them about what is the best practice approach. (Interviewee 8. Interview with Annie Douglas, 5 July 2018)

These findings are consistent with the literature around working with donors to be receptive to alternative approaches (Hildyard et al. 2001; Sou 2021). However, this may be difficult in the context of an NGO scramble (Cooley and Ron 2002). NGOs are often expected to be unconditionally grateful for funding, and donors leave little room for communication in the design of development initiatives (Reith 2010).

In particular, the second interviewee quote highlights the importance of NGO practitioners building strong relationships when liaising with donors. The literature also suggests that it is vital to promote positive, constructive dialogue (Sou 2021; Wallace, Bornstein, and Chapman 2006). Young people have also raised the importance of this approach. FRIDA, an entirely youth-led feminist donor organisation, prioritises horizontal dialogue, maintains flexible funding and reporting requirements, and provides opportunities for capacity-building for the youth-led, grassroots partner organisations that they fund (Bashi et al. 2018). In a study highlighting perspectives from FRIDA’s local partner organisations, young women raised the importance of patience and investing time in getting to know donors (Bashi et al. 2018, 452). The young women also suggested donors should focus on horizontal relationships, human interaction, expect fewer quantitative indicators and value participatory approaches to better enable the work of young women-led organisations (Bashi et al. 2018, 452).

The example of FRIDA also points to the value of working with a donor that is already aligned to the NGO’s agenda and values (Bashi et al. 2018). FRIDA’s mission and values are highly aligned to those of the partner organisations that they fund. Sander’s (2021) case study of a Jordanian women’s rights organisation, WoRJor, and its relationship with its donors, is also instructive. A donor had approached the organisation with a pre-designed project and said the priorities were non-negotiable. The organisation’s director declined to work with the organisation, saying she would not work with donors with priorities that did not feed into WoRJor’s strategy. Even in discussions with existing donors (including state agencies and NGOs from Europe and North America) about ongoing programs, WoRJor staff had objected to and challenged instances when donors had imposed particular requirements or priorities. In Mason and Niewolny’s (2021) study of Adelanto, a small, local, decentralised NGO in Mexico, the organisation avoided conventional forms of funding in order to prioritise downwards accountability and maintain solidarity between staff and participants. Mason and Niewolny (2021) acknowledge that this example is not infinitely scalable, or feasible for larger NGOs. However, the example does challenge the notion NGOs are expected to act as gift recipients that are unconditionally grateful for funding (Reith 2010). Bashi et al.’s (2018) and Sander’s (2021) studies highlight the importance of working with donors that are already aligned to an NGO’s values or mission. Particularly, NGOs might seek out donors that take a rights-based perspective, which understand that youth participation is an important end in itself.

On the issue around quantitative indicators, which was raised by the participants in this study, a possible approach might be to advocate with donors the value of qualitative or mixed method approaches to evaluation. For example, utilising the Most Significant Change (MSC) technique might address some of the challenges that interviewees raised around understanding the impact of participatory programs, as it was specifically developed for this purpose (Dart and Davies 2003; Willets and Crawford 2007). However, MSC does not aim to produce representative, generalisable data about impacts for the whole target population (Dart and Davies 2003). Donors and NGOs may be able to find a compromise on appropriate evaluation approaches, if they are able to enter positive and constructive dialogues, by combining techniques like MSC with quantitative evidence on the spread of outcomes.

Challenge: inflexible and linear approaches are not conducive to youth participation

Some interviewees (four of nine) mentioned that NGOs take linear and inflexible approaches to development, which interviewees identified as not conducive to youth participation. Some interviewees commented on this perception of inflexibility:

NGO workers have been so bashed into this approach of projects, log frames, theories of change, program logics, monitoring and evaluation frameworks. People can’t see out of the project frame. (Interviewee 5. Interview with Annie Douglas, 15 June 2018)

You can’t really have a linear program style for youth work, and most NGOs are set up that way, and [donors are] set up that way. (Interviewee 3. Interview with Annie Douglas, 7 June 2018)

Most interviewees (five of nine) also mentioned that unrealistic time frames create a challenge for facilitating youth participation:

Most NGOs have this obsession with pace, they’re obsessed with time frames. And that’s often imposed by donors and institutional structures that they work in. (Interviewee 7. Interview with Annie Douglas, 28 June 2018)

In development programs, people are just crazy busy. They’re trying to get all that done with limited resources, limited capacity in terms of the [staff]. (Interviewee 8. Interview with Annie Douglas, 5 July 2018)

Some interviewees attributed the existence of inflexible and linear approaches to programming to donor-imposed expectations around time, resources and accountability. Donors may actively encourage reductions on overheads and staff costs, putting additional pressure on recipient organisations to achieve outcomes (Mount 2022). NGOs may agree to tight timelines or limited resources in order to be competitive and ensure funding (Lister 2000; Reith 2010).

One interviewee also explored the notion that inflexible and linear approaches can be attributed to the need for control:

Donors [and] NGOs want to have control of the program or the activities, and to kind of just let young people do something, in layman’s terms, is … a shift of control and ownership from NGOs, who often want to be seen to be the experts and the power holders. (Interviewee 5. Interview with Annie Douglas, 15 June 2018)

This insight highlights that there is a clash between the idea that young people should be empowered in youth participation programming, and the notion that donors and NGO practitioners should be the “experts” and “power holders”. An understanding of log frames and theories of change, significant features of these inflexible approaches, usually requires technical knowledge (Wallace, Bornstein, and Chapman 2006), and this can mean that beneficiaries are excluded from meaningfully participating in development initiatives (Kapoor 2005; Kothari 2005; Makuwira 2018).

Some interviewees (four of nine) identified issues relating to tokenistic or limited participatory engagement from young people. For instance, some interviewees commented:

When you’re looking at the governance side of projects or organisations … [NGO staff] say “we should have a youth project committee.” But does that youth team actually have a say in decision making? Or is that a tokenistic kind of engagement? (Interviewee 2. Interview with Annie Douglas, 5 June 2018)

I think that it’s very rare that any project … really achieves full substantive participation in terms of youth leadership at all stages of the program cycle with the voice and impact of young people coming through at every stage. (Interviewee 8. Interview with Annie Douglas, 5 July 2018)

Young people involved in participatory programs have also raised this issue. For example, in Campbell et al.’s (2009) study of a participatory HIV-focused project in rural South Africa a number of young people expressed frustration at their minimal involvement. Some young people particularly identified that youth committees were tokenistic, and that older adults would take over when there was “real work” to be done (Campbell et al. 2009, 104).

The findings emphasise the impact that authority of experts and older adults has on young people’s abilities to meaningfully participate, which is reflected in the broader literature on the problems with participatory development (Kapoor 2005; Kothari 2005; Makuwira 2018). There is increasing pressure of upward accountability to donors at the expense of participatory approaches that are necessary to ensure downward accountability to beneficiaries and local partners. This can in some part be attributed to NGO dependency on donor funding and the challenges NGOs face in balancing accountability to both donors and beneficiaries (Hickey and Mohan 2005; Mount 2022; Olawoore and Kamruzzaman 2019; Sou 2021).

Most interviewees (five of nine) discussed either the difficulties of engaging more marginalised young people, or the fact that more privileged, elite young people tend to be chosen to play more active roles in programs:

It’s really difficult to hear from those that you would consider to be most marginalised, those living with a disability, those who have fallen out of education quite early, those who are from ethnic or cultural groups that are in a minority. (Interviewee 3. Interview with Annie Douglas, 7 June 2018)

A lot of NGOs … usually identify the naturally confident kids, the leaders in the school or community … because the projects are looking for outcomes where those kids are delivering some things … So, to make things easier for themselves, they always ask those natural leaders, because it’s just going to work out better. (Interviewee 7. Interview with Annie Douglas, 28 June 2018)

These findings are consistent with the literature, as it is widely acknowledged that often it is the most confident and capable young people, or the most privileged young people, who are offered vocal or active roles (Kwon 2019; Trivelli and Morel 2021). As the final interviewee comment highlights, it may require less time and resources to engage these young people when there is pressure to deliver program results. However, it is critical to focus on building the skills and capacity of less privileged young people to meaningfully influence decision-making if participatory programs are to empower marginalised people, as they intend, rather than reinforce existing social and political hierarchies.

Approach: shift towards flexible approaches and structures that allow for meaningful youth participation

The interviewees highlighted the need for organisational change within NGOs in order to better facilitate youth participation in development. Most participants (five of nine) reflected on the need to ensure that young people are actively participating from the very beginning and throughout the program cycle. These participants implied that young people rarely participate at the early stages of design. Some (two of nine) mentioned that this is particularly crucial to preventing tokenistic participation in programming:

If you bring young people in right from the beginning to identify the issue, and then help figure out some of the solutions, then you know that you can work with them throughout, because you’ve built it into the design. (Interviewee 8. Interview with Annie Douglas, 5 July 2018)

Having recognised structures where young people actually form, participate and own the design, implementation and [monitoring and evaluation] is actually really important, and then formalising it as much as possible through any mechanisms you can. (Interviewee 5. Interview with Annie Douglas, 15 June 2018)

If young people are involved in the design and creation of programming, then this allows them the opportunity to steer a project and ensure its relevance to their needs. Lansdown (2006) supported this notion, and argued that young people should participate in the earliest stages of project planning, not simply once the project is already being implemented, to allow for the identification of young people’s needs. Young people have expressed disappointment at their lack of involvement, and shown desire to design and shape initiatives. For example, in Kwon’s (2019) study of young people’s participation at global youth conferences, Kwon highlighted that young people were frustrated by the rigid schedules that prioritised speaking slots for politicians and diplomats at the expense of airtime for young people. If young people had been involved in designing the initiative from the beginning, and allowed to develop the schedule, it might have better reflected the needs and interests of youth participants.

Some participants (three of nine) highlighted that there should be a shift from inflexible and structured approaches to more flexible and creative approaches to programming:

I think we just need to be more creative and organic … and maybe doing less but better. (Interviewee 1. Interview with Annie Douglas, 17 May 2018)

[An] approach is just being a bit less structured, having some structure, but then just saying “okay, you’re youth … we understand that you know what’s best. Here’s a tiny bit of guidance, here’s the organisation’s resources, come up with a plan.” Most organisations never allow that approach. (Interviewee 5. Interview with Annie Douglas. June 15, 2018)

This approach reflects a commitment to reducing processes that make it difficult for young people to participate. Bashi et al. (2018) highlight that young people tend to respond positively to these approaches. Some young women members of FRIDA’s partner organisations said they appreciated the different experience it had been to work with FRIDA in comparison with more traditional donors, highlighting that they felt listened to, and able to maintain ownership and direction of programs (Bashi et al. 2018).

Hildyard et al. (2001, 70) argued that NGOs should “put their own house in order” and be reflexive about how their own organisational structure and culture can lead to inflexible approaches to practice. Being reflexive may require critically evaluating and adapting some approaches, but also keeping robust risk mitigation and accountability measures in place, where appropriate. One interviewee raised the importance of striking a balance between taking more flexible and creative approaches but also ensuring that protection and safeguarding remain an utmost priority, particularly in relation to recruitment and outreach:

We should never, ever compromise safeguarding of children and young people for ease of access to them … But all of the different ways that NGOs are required to document and ensure those procedures are being followed can mean that by the time you’re even having a conversation with a young person, it’s taken a really long time. So there has to be some kind of middle ground. (Interviewee 3. Interview with Annie Douglas, 7 June 2018)

Some participants (four of nine) mentioned the significance of having champions of youth participation, or support of leaders, within organisations:

You’d have to have the commitment of management, and champions of that within your organisation. (Interviewee 2. Interview with Annie Douglas, 5 June 2018)

It’s important that all levels of an organisation have a similar understanding about the value of [youth participation], so that it can be invested in, supported throughout, and communicated well. (Interviewee 8. Interview with Annie Douglas, 5 July 2018)

Another interviewee commented that it might be useful to have a frame or strategy to demonstrate commitment to youth participation in practice, and to ensure accountability:

Development practitioners should always have a youth participation or inclusion frame in everything they do … It’s kind of like an ethos, it’s a value … That frame is brought about in the work that we do, through the design, the planning, the monitoring and evaluation. (Interviewee 5. Interview with Annie Douglas, 15 June 2018)

The findings suggest it is crucial to ensure that there is commitment to youth participation within an organisation through the existence of champions, leaders, strategies and frameworks to improve youth participation. This might also allow for more effective and strategic advocacy with donors, which was identified by interviewees as key to ensuring increased funding for youth participation initiatives.

Conclusion

This small qualitative study aimed to explore NGO practitioner perspectives of the challenges and approaches to facilitating meaningful and active youth participation. While there is a significant body of literature that explores the problems and challenges with facilitating participation from marginalised groups in international development practice, few studies have focused on the specific challenges for young people. This study contributes to the limited literature focused on youth participation (for example, Campbell et al. 2009; Pruitt 2021; Trivelli and Morel 2021), adding the unique perspectives of NGO practitioners as brokers and bridge builders who “employ and circulate” meanings and practices of participatory development (Mueller-Hirth 2012, 652). The findings revealed that NGO practitioners find it difficult to implement participatory approaches when donors tend not to prioritise youth participation, and prefer that programs demonstrate quantitatively measurable impact. As a number of studies suggest, NGOs may avoid challenging donors on these priorities because funding is critical to their survival (Lister 2000; Mount 2022; Reith 2010). The inflexible and linear approaches, which some NGOs employ, are not conducive to youth participation. They can be overly technical, and can make it difficult for young people to meaningfully engage at various stages of the program cycle. Several scholars have emphasised that expert power within development institutions and structures creates challenges for facilitating genuine participation and collaboration (Kapoor 2005; Kothari 2005; Makuwira 2018; Sou 2021).

The interviewees raised a number of key recommendations for improving youth participation in development practice. The findings suggest that NGO practitioners can foster productive relationships and have dialogue with donors. This provides the opportunity to advocate for the prioritisation and adequate funding of youth participation, as well as the use of evaluation approaches that are appropriate for participatory initiatives. This point is consistent with the broader literature, suggesting that dialogue and advocacy is an effective tactic for ensuring that participatory approaches are adopted (Hildyard et al. 2001; Sou 2021; Wallace, Bornstein, and Chapman 2006). The interviewees highlighted that, in order to facilitate young people’s active participation in programs and decision-making, NGOs should engage young people from the beginning of the program cycle, and adopt more flexible and creative approaches that are inclusive. The findings also suggest that NGOs should include a commitment to young people’s participation and empowerment in formal strategies, and have organisation leaders champion flexible, creative, and participatory approaches. It would be valuable for future research to focus on young people’s views to deepen understandings of their perspectives on the challenges and recommendations for improving their participation. Future research should also focus on the views of local program staff and donors, who occupy unique roles that affect the design and implementation of participatory initiatives.

With 1.21 billion young people globally, and the majority living in the Global South, young people make up a large proportion of the target population for development initiatives around education, employment, health, peace-building, and response to climate change. For these programs to be successful, donors and NGOs should consider that improving youth participation can have important implications for development practice. Youth participation can allow for a better understanding of problems and needs, which can lead to more effective programming (Head 2011; Trivelli and Morel 2021). A strong commitment to facilitating youth participation in international development practice is also critical from a rights perspective. Youth participation is crucial to ensuring that this large generation of young people feel confident in their ability to express their views, and have these views meaningfully considered, in development programs.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the participants in this study for their time, and for providing their valuable perspectives. I am also grateful to the reviewers for their insightful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Annie Douglas

Annie Douglas is a PhD student at the University of Melbourne researching youth participation, leadership and young women's empowerment. She has experience at an Australian youth not-for-profit, Oaktree, and has facilitated youth-led project evaluations and project design workshops with young people in Timor-Leste. This research was part of an Honours thesis at the University of Melbourne.