By Michelle Kovacevic, Coordinator of youth activities at the Global Landscapes Forum
This blog was originally published on SciDev.Net
This time last year, I was only just starting to understand the participation challenges that young people across the world face when attending large science policy conferences.
On the surface, it seems progress has been made, with many commitments for youth representation in committees and sessions. Yet, when you look below the surface, youth (defined as 18-30 years old) still often remain on the margins of participation in these conferences.
One of the reasons is that young people are not provided with sufficient communication skill-building opportunities to effectively contribute to discussions and to become better professionals.
Another possible reason is that the issues discussed at large science policy conferences are often not the ones that youth would be regularly exposed to or are widely discussed and debated among them.
To try changing these paradigms, I teamed up with two other inspiring young people — Marina Cherbonnier from the Young Professionals for Agricultural Development and Sarah Dickson-Hoyle from the International Forestry Students Association. Marina, myself and Peter Casier started a special youth session at the first Global Landscapes Forum in Warsaw in December 2013, and then Sarah joined us to help run a special youth session at the Forests Asia Summit in Jakarta in May 2014.
We three have learned some key lessons along the way, which are detailed in a recent report.
First, having a youth session at your conference doesn’t mean you’ve ticked the youth box. There are fears that relegating youth to a separate session condemns them to continued marginalisation unless appropriate steps are taken to integrate them into the rest of the conference programme. This is not an argument against youth sessions, which are important to ensure the the youth perspective is formally represented. But we can’t forget to also push for more young professionals and early career scientists as panellists and panel organisers, particularly for topics where youth issues are of key relevance, such as education and employment.
Second, youth sessions aren’t just for young people. While young people often have innovative and creative ideas, we believe it will be difficult to mainstream this thinking if older professionals do not support and operationalise these ideas. Youth sessions should bring youth and senior professionals together to link goals and action statements. Older people can also benefit from youth sessions by being pushed to have fresh perspectives and find new ways of explaining their ideas..
Third, don’t just give young people a space to share their ideas — they need skill-building, networking and mentoring opportunities too. We still see many young people afraid to take the microphone or unable to clearly articulate their ideas to a professional audience. While large international conferences offer prolific opportunities for networking with other organisations, young people are often intimidated by these large networking scenarios. We need to give them the confidence and skills to effectively contribute to these discussions. As one participant at our previous youth session noted, it would be great to link young participants to established people in relevant fields who could act as their mentors.
Fourth, give us enough time. Don’t schedule the youth session at the end of the day because it is not considered as important as a high-level panel. We need conference organisers who aren’t afraid to rise above institutional politics and will give time and space for young people to contribute and to learn. You never know, the youth session may turn out to be the most dynamic and interesting session at your conference, with delegates praising its innovative approaches for months to come.
Fifth, don’t forget to plan what happens after the session. We often get so caught up in the logistics of organising and preparing sessions that we don’t put enough thought into how to implement recommendations. This is tough as funding often just covers single events. But we should be asking the “what next” questions early on in the conference planning process and ensuring these points are reflected in our concept notes and efforts.
Building on lessons learned
We’re now in the midst of organising our next youth project for the 2014 Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) in Peru in December and we’re pleased to say that we have been able to build on lessons learned to make sure we can deliver even better youth activities.
The forum organisers have committed to youth involvement in various aspects of the GLF programme:
- A dedicated youth session where over 200 young people will be lead innovative discussions related to the four themes of 2014 GLF;
- Making age a selection criteria for discussion forum speakers;
- Encouraging youth facilitators of thematic pavilions.
For the first time, we’ll be running a blended masterclass series that aims to offer mentoring and capacity building opportunities (how to contribute to a discussion, how to pitch your idea, how to facilitate a discussion, how to apply critical thinking skills, understanding what landscape approaches are) to a wide range of young people and will be setting them “tasks” to complete during the GLF conference.
We’re hoping that these efforts will lead to increased youth awareness about landscape issues and how these relate to climate change and sustainable development; greater engagement between older professionals and youth, and better understanding of youth issues among older professionals attending the conference; more youth taking leadership roles in conference sessions and in future meetings; and increased cooperation among youth organisations in the field of landscape and climate change.
If we manage to achieve even some of these aims, it will surely put us in good stead to ensure that 2015 — the year of action on climate change and sustainable development — will have an army of well-equipped, confident youth leaders at the helm.
Do you agree with these tips? Do you have other ideas in mind? Visit us on Facebook or connect with us on Twitter @GlobalLF, or join us in the greater conversation by using the hashtag #thinklandscape.
You can also send your own youth blog to landscapes.youth@gmail.com
Michelle Kovacevic is a science communicator and educator with a strong interest in how the ideas and perspectives of early career professionals are represented in science policy forums. Get in touch with her @kovamic.
