Government sector
Government sector and Youth Week
Published by Youth WeekGovernment has a significant influence in the lives of young people. It is important that when making decisions that will impact on young people the voice of young people is heard. This requires strategies that will be similar and different to other parts of the population.
All of government should have an understanding of the Youth Development Strategy Aotearoa. The Ministry of Youth Development also has other useful resources.
A good way to start considering the needs of young people is through youth participation. Youth participation is about listening to and involving young people.
Here area few ideas of things government departments could do to support and develop a wider understanding of young people.
Government departments as mentors
Hold training with the aim of understanding more about young people
Develop a youth participation strategy
Government departments as mentors
•1) Create more mentorships, internships, job-shadowing, and volunteer opportunities in your workplace in order to get young people familiar with your business before they make their education decisions.
•2) Add youth from the community, or young employees, onto corporate boards, sub-committees, and workgroups.
Hold training with the aim of understanding more about young people
Think about what type of training would be relevant to your area of work. Identify possible topics and speakers. Don't forget that young people are a good reason and are experts about their life experiences.
Develop a youth participation strategy
If your department or agency works with, makes decisions, or advocates positions that impact on young people then youth participation is something you should think about. Youth participation is about actively involving young people in decisions and activities. Meaningful youth participation involves provision of real opportunities for young people to become involved in decisions that affect them. See the Youth participation tool kit for more information.
•1) Create a workplace guide for new employees to take home and review including technical terms, acronyms, and jargon of the workplace.
•2) Train young employees on how to do a job properly and safely.
•3) Help young employees with career-planning and identifying advancement opportunities in your workplace.
•4) Create challenging work with attainable goals and measurable results.
•5) Help ensure good communication between employees and employer.
•6) Make sure all employees understand appropriate methods, channels, and tools of communication for addressing problems, obstacles, and concerns.
•7) Realise that young workers are new to the workforce and that flexibility and patience is needed to allow them to learn.
•8) Make new workers feel that their ideas are heard and valued.
Discuss the image of young people
When you think of young people what are the messages and images in your mind. Take a chance to think about where they come from and how representative they are of the more than 600,000 young people in Aotearoa New Zealand.
•· What are the young people you know like?
•· Think about the thing you did when you were young.
•· How do the media portray young people?
•· What is the fit between your experience and media reporting?
This could be a staff or wider exercise. See Where is the goog news? The media and young people article to stimulate discussion.
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