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Involve Young People In Local Economic And Employment Development

John Warner

1 Tully Street, Whyalla Stuart SA 5608,
Phone/Fax 61 0886493541 E-Mail Mabel@bigpond.com
Division of Business and Enterprise, University of South Australia, Whyalla Campus, Nicolson Avenue Whyalla Norrie SA 5608 E-Mail WARJW001@unisa.edu.au

April 2000

Abstract

At a time when many people feel overwhelmed by the problems and challenges facing children and adolescents, communities across the country are discovering new energy in working together toward a positive vision for young people. Instead of focusing only on reducing risks and intervening in problems, these communities are rallying to rebuild the foundation of development that all young people need—a foundation that has crumbled for far too many young people in our society. Uniting a community to nurture the positive development of youth is much like playing in a jazz ensemble. Each musician must know the tune and listen to the other ensemble members; all players must improvise together—sometimes taking the lead and sometimes blending into the background. To create a community-wide commitment to youth, all the “players” need to be an ensemble—working toward a common vision of what is needed to promote the healthy development of young people.

Background

During the past decade the economic and social profile of Whyalla, its infrastructure, its associated industries and small businesses have all undergone significant changes. Whyalla needs change! For one who has lived here over thirty years this is difficult to realise because all residents are part of the change. Whyalla like other regional communities in Australia are losing their young people due to lack of perceived opportunities for further tertiary studies or job opportunities. This leads to the important but serious problem that is the major concern of this paper. How can we get young people involved local economic and employment development? How can the community and its civic leaders grapple with the problems confronting the young people 15 - 19 year olds living in the city?

Whyalla

Introduction

The Whyalla region consists of Whyalla and Iron Knob and it is the largest regional city in South Australia. The population has been changing slowly over many years. There has been many economic factors influencing the loss of population in the community with the closure of the Whyalla shipyards, the downsizing of BHP Steel workforce mainly due to global economic pressures and a weak domestic market for steel products. Combined that with the closure of government offices and services and the failure of state government to adopt a decentralisation policy to provide government services and agencies in regional South Australia.

Population Profile

In the 1996 ABS Census showed a total of some 1510 persons aged between 15-19 year olds. See Table 1. Furthermore, the same statistics highlighted the number between 10-14 year olds at the time of the Census was 1797 and in 1991 Census 1838 young people age between 10-14. At the next Census it would be possible to see the youth migration out of the community gradually getting worse not better as the population declines even further. For illustration purposes by making comparisons with ABS 1991 Census it would paint a picture of the loss of 542 young people between 1991 and 1996 a period of five years.

Table 1

A.B.S 1996 LGA - Whyalla © - B03 Age by Sex

	Male		Female
Age		Persons
	178	164	342
16	148	130	278
17	181	131	312
18	164	141	305
19	129	144	273
TOTAL 15-19	800	710	1510

Adapted from Australian Bureau of Statistics Census 96

Catalogue No. 2024.0.30.001

A.B.S 1991 LGA - Whyalla © - B03 Age by Sex

Adapted from Australian Bureau of Statistics Census 91

Catalogue No. 2024.0.30.001

The population projections for the Whyalla region still see no end in the current decrease in population from the city. See Table 2.

Table 2 Population Projections for the Whyalla Region

Source: ABS Regional Analysis and Policy Section (DEET)

Forecast percentage change in population from 1996 to 2005.

Whyalla in regional South Australia would be no different than other regional centre in Australia that is feeling the effects loss of employment and training opportunities for youth and other disadvantaged persons. Without young men and women there are no future leaders in those communities. The time has come to ask some tough questions:

1. Why do our young people leave and what can we as concerned community do to keep our greatest resource our young people here?
2. Who goes? Research on migration indicates that it is the adventurous, the ambitious and the motivated that move. Whyalla and the wider region’s future leave with these young people. This is not a new phenomenon. Who remains? What are their special needs?

In regional South Australia, in particular Whyalla a need for building community leadership for economic development should be seen as an objective to improve the well being of rural and non metropolitans outside of Adelaide. This can be achieved by:

• Enhancing community economic vitality through developing a group of local leaders young or old, who will focus on community uniqueness, resources and potential,
• Analysing demographic, social and economic attributes of communities to help leaders and residents better understand their strengths and opportunities for economic development,
• Building human capacity of urban and rural residents for participation in labour force and entrepreneurial activities, and
• Improving the ability of local leaders to conduct the process of establishing informed public policy through issues of education.

Measuring Community Strengths

What factors contribute to these differences among the local community? It is time to explore this question in Whyalla by examining the percentage of youth in a given community that experience 13 different strengths in their families, schools, peers, and community. An overseas study identified by Blyth and Roehlkepartain, (1993) examining the same 13 strengths decided that six are particularly powerful in reducing at-risk behaviours in a community.

These are:

• Youth who avoid peers with negative behaviour
• Youth who are motivated and committed in school
• Youth who are involved in structured activities
• Youth who attend religious services
• Youth who experience a caring and supportive school environment
• Youth who have caring and supportive families

These six factors by Blyth and Roehlkepartain, (1993) certainly point toward strong communities. In the healthiest communities studied (those where youth are least likely to engage in at-risk behaviours), the average community experiences 4.3 of the six strengths (A community is said to have a strength if the percentage of youth who experience that strength is greater than the average.). In the least healthy community, the average number falls to 1.1. Furthermore, as we would expect, the average levels of at-risk behaviours among youth decline steadily as more of these strengths are present. In communities where youth experience none or one of the strengths, the average youth is involved in 2.6 at-risk behaviours. In communities with all six key strengths, the average youth engages in 1.6 at-risk behaviours.

Unfortunately, Blyth and Roehlkepartain, (1993) say these six strengths are relatively rare in communities. On average, the communities have 2.9 of the strengths. Out of the community being studied, only eight have all six strengths present, and 19 had none of the strengths. These differences are quite important in that they account for nearly 70 percent of the differences in community health.

Both Blyth and Roehlkepartain, (1993) suggest that these strengths are more important to community health than demographic factors that are often blamed for youth problems. For example, differences in community size and percentage of single-parent families’ together only account for 14 percent of the differences in the local community.

Keys to Community Strengths

Regional Australia, in particular Whyalla for any given young person, the support personally received from family, peers, and schoolteachers is most important, the number of youth who experience key community strengths also matters. Furthermore, several themes or patterns emerge from the research carried out by (Blyth and. Roehlkepartain, 1993) are:

• Community-Level Institutions Are the Source Of The Most Powerful Strengths.

Schools, churches and synagogues, youth organisations, and general involvement in the structured activities they provide are clearly influential in shaping healthy communities for youth. If a community is concerned about maintaining healthy youth, it is well advised to do everything possible to support these organisations.

• Majorities Make A Difference.

Only when most youth in a community experience strength does it become a powerful predictor of a community’s health. Like a seesaw, the balance only shifts when enough weight is placed on one side to offset the other. This perspective underscores the importance of communities acting together for all youth, not just those who are easiest to reach.

• Strengths Build On Each Other.

While individual community strengths may not have a dramatic impact, they become powerful when drawn together. Adding community strengths one by one can create a gradual decline in at-risk behaviours.

Strategies for Change

By definition, the challenge of building community strengths for youth is a task for everyone in the Whyalla community and in Regional Australia. that each group has a unique role to play. Several key strategies by (Blyth and Roehlkepartain, 1993) for building community strengths that may apply across all sectors:

• Get To Know the Youth in Your Community.

Your young people may have very different experiences and perceptions than youth in a national or statewide study. A detailed survey is one service that is offered to communities to help them listen to young people.

• Create A Positive Vision for Youth IN Your Community.

What kind of community do people in Whyalla want for our youth? What unique resources does our community have? What are major concerns? Bringing people from all parts of the community to talk about these kinds of questions can help you begin to move from blaming organisations for problems to seeking to develop a shared language and set of priorities.

• Focus More Energy on Primary Services.

Most community resources for youth are used on social services for youth at risk. These prevention and intervention services are an important part of a community, but they do not address the broader needs of all youth for primary services, facilities, and events that help youth develop in healthy ways and have something constructive to do.

• Recognise Every Person’s Responsibility for the Welfare of All Youth.

Parents must recover their role in affirming and controlling young people besides their own children. Businesses, civic groups, schools, congregations, and neighbourhoods must all begin asking how they touch the lives of youth in positive ways.

• Support Youth Involvement in Structured Activities.

For parents, this may mean setting aside other priorities to make time for scouts or soccer. For businesses, it may mean sponsoring a community orchestra or giving employees flex time to coach Little League. For congregations and youth organisations, it may mean focusing resources into programs that provide positive outlets for youth.

• Coordinate Activities for All Types of Youth.

Athletic, music, drama, and other programs must be diversified to allow for maximum participation. The goal is not to involve the busiest youth in yet another program, but to provide appropriate, enriching activities for all young people.

• Support Other Organisations Dedicated to Youth.

The needs are too great for communities to spend their energies on infighting between schools and community groups, or schools and the religious community. While every organisation may have its own values and priorities, there is little reason why challenges and debates cannot take place in a spirit of mutual concern about youth.

Broadening Our Focus

For the past two decades, in Regional Australia in particular Whyalla, much attention has been paid to preventing individual teenagers from getting into trouble. Social workers and counsellors have concentrated on addressing issues in the lives of particular teens. More recently, people have begun to focus on creating positive self-esteem, strong personal skills, and a sense of personal values in individual youth. Each of these emphases has a place. But there is another level that can have a positive, potentially broader impact as well: finding ways to build strengths in communities and organisations so that all young people are supported, nourished, and empowered to grow up healthy. It is time in Regional Australia, in particular Whyalla to involve youth in their own future.

Involving Youth In Their Future

The time has come to connect youth positively to their communities and improve community life in regional Australia through youth led service initiatives. Young men and women are an important and often unrealised, source of skills, energy, creatively and vision for communities. The mobilisation of young men and women in local development efforts needs to be an important focus on community economic development, not just as potential participants, but as active contributors to the process.

In regional Australia cities and towns must become smart communities to find a way of community engagement. Community engagement is a process of engaging youth or other members of a community in identifying strengths and opportunities, problems and potential solutions. A smart community ensures that the development and use of information and communication technologies are grounded in the needs, capacities and priorities of the whole community, not just certain sections of it.

There are four significant aspects worth noting:

1. Promotion of young people’s and community’s participation in economic planning and action.
2. Adoption of key principles to enhance youth and community participation and involvement.
3. Design of specific local youth and community economic and employment development initiatives.
4. Promotion of youth and community enterprise and options.

A smart community in regional Australia must demonstrate that they have a vision for the future that involves all members of the community, in particular young men and women who will accept leadership and other roles within that community for its survival into the future.

The promotion of young people’s and community’s participation in economic planning and action.

In regional Australia local communities are increasingly coming recognise and understand the contribution that young men and women can play in economic change. This can be achieved through a series of actions:

• Inclusion of youth representation on committees, task forces, and on any community economic development initiative.
• Formation of youth councils with a specific mandate to provide a youth perspective on key issues affecting their community, and importantly mobilise peer involvement.
• Instigation of regular youth forums which will enable young men and women reflect on the perceptions of their community (its strengths, limitations and opportunities) key concerns and ideas for practical action.
• Establish a community leadership program which will identify and assist both talented and the not so talented young men and women who want to:

• learn more about the challenges facing their local community
• become more involved
• help to make better decisions, and
• assume leadership roles.

• Use of competitions to gain a youth perspective and ideas on such economic development areas as diverse as community identity, town entrance statements, and new tourism initiatives, new special events and business opportunities.
• Acknowledgment of young people as leaders and contributors to local and regional development through the creation of an annual event where young men and women are recognised for their contribution.

Adoption of key principles to enhance youth participation and involvement.

Participation and involvement by young people in local economic development should be based on the following fundamental principles:

• be by choice
• be enjoyable, challenging and fun
• they be able to maximise decision-making by young men and women and importantly, their accountability
• promote maturity
• at all times raise young people’s awareness of the social, political, economic, cultural and personal aspects that affect them
• create opportunities in the short and long-term for young people to influence decisions
• community should involve experiences respected by young people and by their peers
• make common sense and demystify adult structures and processes
• involve young men and women in developing training skills and development
• importantly involve young people in planning, via the development of goals and strategies
• provide opportunities for building active support relationships between young men and women and their community
• importantly community must provide a sense of belonging and ownership in any process
• at all times provide critical analysis and feedback of the experience and actions within the process
• all levels of government provide and ensure adequate resources including time, space, funding and information sharing
• all levels of government and community organisations encourage collective action at all times and assist in the development of linkages and networking.

Design of local youth economic and employment initiatives

Regional communities need to increase the net number, quality and variety of employment and economic options for young men and women needs to be the focus of all levels of government and community organisations. Such a strategy requires a comprehensive research, design and coordination of the implementation of a range of youth initiatives, including the following possibilities:

• a specific “youth jobs campaign” targeting employers, service clubs and community organisations, highlighting support measures available to assist in the creation of new employment positions.
• creation of specific local group apprenticeships and trainee schemes
• use of local media to highlight best practice in terms of local firms committed to employing young men and women, complemented by a local recognition award scheme
• a specific advertising focus on the need for casual and part time employment positions.

Promotion of youth enterprise options

The attraction of self-employment is gaining popularity as an employment option for young people. Fostering an interest and involvement of young men and women is a realistic and practical option for any regional community. Support for education for enterprise activities that enhance the enterprising activities and behaviour of students, young and unemployed people.

Youth As Resources

The power of youth as resources seems to be that it touches a fundamental ache in all young people in regional Australia: the need to feel useful. The need to belong. In proposing a new concept utilising youth as resources as a community based program for regional Australia. In small towns and cities that the State or Federal Government or both provide small grants to young people to design and carry out service projects that address social problems and contribute to significant community change. Youth as Resources programs could be administered by new or existing boards in the community comprising of youth and adults responsible for grant making. Through these projects whose costs are affordable to any community, young people in class rooms, neighbourhood centres, youth organisations, community foundations, and clubs tackle a range of social issues that concern them - from health, housing, education, and environment to drug abuse, gangs, illiteracy, and crime.

Youth from all walks of life get involved. Some are experienced in community service; others may be new to volunteering. Some have troubled histories; some are honour roll students. Some live in capital cities, other live in towns and smaller cities within regional Australia. All want to make their communities better places for themselves and others.

Communities must recognise that youth are important. They are an important part of a community’s survival. A community cannot solve its problems without youth becoming involved in leadership roles. This message is directed at young people. When youth do become involved in projects promoting youth as resources projects and serve on boards, they begin to sense of connection, civic responsibility. And self worth as they see their own ideas and actions create positive change in social conditions.

Youth As Resources Program Standards

The Federal Government should establish the Centre for Youth as Resources as a separated incorporated organisation on a model that promotes Youth as Resources by forming strong-adult partnerships by engaging young people as primary and equal partners in policy setting and decision making. These programs should embody a fundamental Youth as Resources philosophy- youth can do make a difference in meeting critical community needs in regional Australia. In partnership with adults on local boards of management they make program and policy decisions affecting their future paths and destiny. They also act as benefactor, evaluating project proposals from their peers and awarding grant dollars.

In regional Australia as Youth as Resources programs evolve according to unique local needs and resources, each community develops its own history and flavour of its own. Yet all should adhere to a common set of standards that meets the same standard already set and modified for Australian conditions to constitute the mission and philosophy of Youth as Resources.

All Youth As Resources Programs ShalL:

• provide grants for youth-planned, youth-led volunteer community service projects;
• are governed by a local board including youth and adults as partners in policy-making, grant-making, and governance;
• fund and support service projects that help resolve critical community needs; and
• recognise and celebrate positive youth contributions to the community

Youth As Resources Benefits

Youth as Resources represents an unprecedented union between youth development and community economic development. Every one benefits. Communities gain from hard work, services and products youth provide. Young people change their own lives while improving the lives of others. And, adults begin to view youth in new ways - as partners they can trust and respect. All begin to new and potential for the communities they live in and care about.

Youth Gain:

• Leadership, planning, team work, and other life skills
• A sense of connection and accountability to community
• An ethic of service and commitment to be involved
• A capacity to care and feel empathy for others
• A sense of pride and confidence in discovering unique talents
• New respect and acceptance from adults
• A sense of being needed and valued members of a community
• Power to affect personal change and improve lives of others.

Communities Gain

• Resources and creativity to solve critical youth problems and provide needed community services
• Strong youth-adult partnerships
• Mutual understanding and increased trust between youth and adults
• New alliances among local agencies and organisations
• New perspectives brought to bear on local policy making as youth gain a voice in governance and philanthropy.

In regional Australia in communities across the country as they do abroad, youth who have never joined organised activities may take up leadership activities and roles along side those who are experienced as youth and adult leaders. In can happen in classrooms from kindergarten through to university, young people are learning the values of working as part of a group to solve conflicts and social problems. In juvenile correctional settings, youth may take responsibility, creating solutions, and gaining pride and a sense of connection to their local communities they live.

Youth Leadership In Regional Australia

What is Youth Leadership?

Youth Leadership is a community leadership program that will identify and assisted talented students who want to:

• learn more about the challenges facing their local community
• become more involved
• help make better decisions, and
• assume leadership roles

Who Participates in Youth Leadership?

Participation in youth leadership in a local community is open to all high school, college, and university students who attend a local high school or university campus. Any applicant must be in good academic standing and have no attendance or disciplinary problems at their educational institution. The Selection Committee reviews all applicants to form a class of motivated, concerned students who may interest in offering their time and talents towards the improvement of their community.

When Does Youth Leadership Meet?

This program begins in February and concludes in October.

What Subjects are Dealt With In Youth Leadership

The initial curriculum will cover the following subjects:

• Exploring Leadership
• Identifying Personality Traits
• Team Building/Group Dynamics
• Goal Setting Strategies
• Economic Development
• Industrial Development
• Criminal Justice System

Who is Responsible For Selection of the Participants?

The Youth Leadership Selection Committee

The most important factor in selection is identifying those students who are most interested in the program and who are most apt to utilise what they learn in the program.

Youth Leadership Regional Australia

The purpose of Youth Leadership Regional Australia is to operate a training program for tertiary students who have demonstrated tendencies toward leadership abilities which gives them the opportunity to learn more about their community and how it works so they will be encouraged to return to their community following their education.

Youth Leadership Goals

To conduct a training program for high school students that will promote increased awareness of the leadership roles available to them both now and in the future.

Leadership Objectives

• To identify and encourage leadership potential.
• To introduce students to team building techniques; and goal setting strategies.
• To familiarise the students with the leadership roles available to them.
• To encourage students to remain in or return to their local community following their education.

How Will Youth Leadership Be Funded?

All costs of Youth Leadership may be underwritten by State and Federal Governments or by corporate sponsorship.

Closing Remarks

Local leadership will be the greatest catalyst to achieving regional outcomes and without youth it would not be achieved. The strength and variety of regional leaders depends on issues uniting a community sector and individual motivation. By providing support mechanisms the local, state and federal government in partnership with community will encourage participation of existing and new leaders will be encouraged to achieve, new leaders will emerge and succession will occur. A strength and diversity of local leadership will ensure debate and recognition of regional issues affecting youth and further enhance the concept of human capital as an integral component of regional Australia’s asset base. It’s young men and women.

References Used

1. A. Blyth, Ph.D. and Eugene C. Roehlkepartain (From September 1993, Source Newsletter) Measuring Community Strengths, Keys to Community Strengths, Strategies for Change and Broadening our Focus.
2. Building Initiatives West Australian Government 1999