Background Document - Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy

youth population. Overall, it could be concluded that the success of this initiative is
linked to enabling young people to have a strong voice that leads to action and to
provide a space for young people to be heard in civic affairs and in informing policy
development.
What is critical to its success is that young people have been put ‘at the centre of
a process created for them that allows flexibility and ownership over their participation’
in civic affairs. Following the initiative in Auckland, it can be shown that political
parties have to find a more fertile strategy to reach young people and one way to do
that is to build bridges between such youth councils and their own structure.
ENHANCING YOUNG PEOPLE’S POLITICAL INTEREST: AGORA DEMOCRATICA 11
Another initiative to try to reach out to young people is happening in Ecuador and
Columbia. Organised with the cooperation of International IDEA and NIMD, this initiative
aims at reaching young people in order to enhance their political engagement.
The first phase of its program is a series of 12 workshops that take place on the
regional level in Ecuador and that aim to raise the consciousness among young people
of their rights and of being aware of the barriers that prevent them from participating
in politics.
This initiative is associated with an interactive website called ‘activate’, where
young people can interact and learn about Ecuador’s state institutions and ways to
participate. The last phase of the initiative is to offer training, especially for young
talented political representatives in political marketing. Part of this initiative specifically
targets young women.
REACHING YOUNG PEOPLE WHERE THEY ARE
As a move to reach out to young people, and especially young women, in 2012 the
South Australia government gave a grant to a young women’s group. This grant will
be used for further developing the group’s website, connecting to other social groups,
training members to manage and update their website and to instruct others on how
to set up a website. This initiative, which has not yet been evaluated, is a really good
attempt to reach young people where they are and through tools which are of interest
to young people.
While attempts to reach young women are always welcome, particular attention
has to be paid to the message and the content. In 1999 the Greens party in the town
of Fremantle in the state of Western Australia put in place a new initiative particularly
targeting young women. The local women’s wing put into place a political mandate
and used its network to reach out to local young women who wanted to run for
election. Criticism, such as the complexity of the message and the lack of ownership
regarding the content of the political mandate, was raised in explanation as to the
failure of the initiative.
11 Source: Lizzie Beekman, political advisor, NIMD
“Having a youth council does not
guarantee youth participation, voice and
power in decision-making.”
WOMEN IN POLITICS DANISH INSTITUTE FOR PARTIES AND DEMOCRACY PAGE 15