Participation expert Harry Shier visits NCB NI

The participation of young people has been of government policy in NI for many years and NCB NI, working with their partners Public Achievement, thought it was time to take stock and ask the young people about their views.

NCB NI & Public Achievement have been running a series of workshops and youth led activities throughout the summer, with children and young people exploring what participation means to them: has their experience of participation been positive? What would they do differently?

The workshops include creative input and are being delivered to young people across NI representing a range of interests. As part of the summer programme, young people have had the chance to engage with international experts in youth participation from the USA and Nicaragua.

NCB NI last week hosted a visit from Harry Shier, a specialist in participation of children and young people. Harry is originally from Ireland however has been living in Nicaragua, Central America for 9 years where he works for CESESMA, a voluntary centre for education in health and environment. His role there is to support local colleagues to develop new education programmes with children and young workers on the region’s coffee plantations.

Harry’s presentation highlighted a recent research project in Nicaragua, ‘Children and young people as active citizens in Nicaragua: how to achieve real policy impact’ and explored the role of participation of young people in making a difference in policy decisions that affect them. The workshop was fun and very productive.

Gill Hassard, Participation Officer at NCB NI, said ‘the workshop gave the young people a chance to evaluate their experiences of participation and think about why they get involved and how their participation experiences could be improved. It challenged them to think about why some young people don’t participate, and got their ideas about how to build a stronger participation culture’.