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InvolveYouth 2:
A guide to meaningful youth engagement |
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3. Outreach and recruitment
In traditional hiring practices organizations will tend to look for the strongest candidate. But when recruiting for a youth engagement program, the aims are very different.
Youth engagement programs and approaches are designed to build capacity, to provide opportunities for leadership that would otherwise not be available. This means working with youth who may have no work experience, little access to extra curricular activities, who may be failing at school, or lack the usual markers of achievement. Youth who face multiple barriers are often under serviced by more traditional youth programs for these very reasons.
Consider the ways in which your outreach and recruitment strategy can contribute to creating access, equity and inclusiveness for all youth.
What qualities are important when recruiting or hiring youth? Rethinking outreachCase study 1Case study 2
What qualities are important when recruiting or hiring youth?
Potential. Do they have the potential to learn, develop and grow?
Passion. Are they passionate about the issue, concerned for the community and committed to change?
Willingness. Youth engagement programs provide intensive training and ongoing support to participants. Are they open, wiling and committed to having that level of investment placed in them?
Authenticity. Is this a "typical" youth in the community? Are they representative of the very demographic that this program is intended to support?
Rethinking outreach
Outreach should be conducted with strategic objectives in mind. There needs to be conscious deliberation, consistent messaging and clear language to describe what the program is about and specifically, what is the expected product or deliverable. Is the program an organic process where the youth will decide on the project outcomes? Or are there particular objectives for the youth to meet and deliverables that they are expected to complete? Critically consider whether the outreach strategy will reach the targeted youth. (See also, Section 9, "When things don't go as planned".)
A case study:
Walking the talk
When I was working at For Youth Initiative (FYI), we were looking for someone for our summer program. We had some really strong candidates - university students with organizing experience, that sort of thing.
And then there was this girl: age 16, a high school student, really a typical youth from that community. And she gave a terrible interview. Terrible. It turns out she lost her cell phone that day and that was it for her. It ruined her day. But you have to see it from her perspective. At her age, given her economic situation, losing her cell phone is a tragedy because she really couldn't afford to get another one.
So we had to decide, are we going to walk the talk? If we were really going to work in this community, we have to invest in the youth from the community.
So we hired her. And she rocked. She had the most successful program of anyone. There were probably a hundred youth that came out to her stuff because she knew exactly what they wanted. She stayed on with us after that summer as a volunteer. And people would come out, just because she was the one organizing it.
For us to hire her that summer there had to be a cultural shift in our thinking. At that time at FYI, there were only the two of us, so we could just make that decision. It's much harder to make that happen in a larger organization. And it is a cultural shift in how we think, what we do, and how we put our principles into practice.
If you choose to work with marginal youth, you have to accept a higher rate of failure. You have to take those higher risks because that's just the way it is. But when things work, they work so much better than anything else.
- Dawood Khan, Case Development Manager, United Way of Greater Toronto
A case study:
A participatory selection process: The Youth Documentary Training Project
In a conventional selection or hiring situation, the exchange is essentially one-sided because the applicant does all the work, by submitting letters of interest, providing resumes, attending interviews and answering questions. Despite these efforts those who are not selected often gain little from the application process. The whole experience can be stressful, sometimes even humiliating.
The application process can be a positive experience that provides tangible benefits for youth. This is an important consideration when working with youth who routinely experience rejection and exclusion.
For the Youth Documentary Project, the City of Toronto was seeking ten to twelve youth for the five-month project in 2005. Instead of conducting individual interviews, 30 applicants were invited to participate in a three-hour workshop on storytelling through film led by a filmmaker.
During the workshop, the youth had an opportunity to learn about the project, talk about points of view in filmmaking, analyze a documentary, join in discussions, and work in small groups to create and perform an improvised presentation. Food and TTC tokens were also supplied.
The workshop format allowed the applicants to:
- Relax and have fun. The focus shifted away from competition and performance. Instead, the youth had an opportunity to get to know one another, share their knowledge and experiences and be creative together.
- Learn. The applicants gained valuable knowledge and skills from the three-hour workshop.
- Demonstrate a range of skills. The workshop involved a number of elements - teamwork, public speaking, creativity, problem-solving, one-on-one interaction, etc. The youth had a range of opportunities to showcase their talents. The City Selection Team also had more time with each of the applicants in a more natural setting.
- Make their own assessment about the project. Since the workshop provided a longer and more in-depth exchange with the project co-ordinators and potential team mates, the youth could make a more informed decision about whether the project was a right fit for them.
The process allowed the City Selection Team to:
- Focus on building a diverse and complementary team. By meeting as a group, the Selection Team could consider not only individual abilities but also how the group would function as a whole. For example, youth with strong and outgoing personalities may be natural leaders, but problems can arise if there are too many leaders in the group. Conversely, a quiet person may seem like a weaker candidate on their own, but in a group setting they work easily with everyone.
- Get to know a range of youth to consider for other projects. The City Selection team had a more informed view of the interest and abilities of a broad range of youth. Non-selected youth could be referred to other projects and opportunities.
>>>> Chapter 4
InvolveYouth 2: A guide to meaningful youth engagement is broken into section chapters on the web. See the Chapters list for links to all chapters.
You can also download the PDF of this document. You will need to have the latest version of the  FREE Acrobat Reader on your computer to view.
To order a printed copy of the guide send an e-mail to safety2@toronto.ca or call 416-397-0442.
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