So what was the point again?
This project aims to utilise Information Communication Technology (ICT) to contribute to an increase in civic engagement and social connectedness amongst young people who experience or who are at risk of experiencing social, cultural or economic marginalisation. It also aimed to conduct research that explored young people’s use of technology and how this impacts on their health and wellbeing.
In practice, we conducted a series of focus groups with young people from a broad range of backgrounds. Thanks so much to the twelve organisations who hosted focus groups for us. We’d also like to thank those workers with young people who spent time participating in interviews about their experiences working with young people experiencing marginalisation.
These focus groups helped us to better understand the needs and experiences of our target group in order to plan and implement a series of Youth Action Workshops which provided young people with the chance to be part of a fun,interactive experience where they could develop a vision for their community and explore the process of taking action.
Focus Groups: Who did we talk to?
Ninety seven (97) young people participated in a focus group across the 12 sites.
• Age range from 13-25, with a majority (58%) of participants aged 16 to 19.
• 56.3% male, 43.8% femal
• 42.7% spoke a language other than English at home
• 22.9% participants were Indigenous.
• Range of Educational and employment experiences: 16.7% doing Yr 9 or less, 28.1% doing year 10 or 11, 6.3% doing Yr 12, 12.5% Looking for work, 13.5% working.
• Range of living situations: While 54.2% lived with parents or other close family members, 11.5% lived in temporary or supported accommodation.
• 14.6% reported some form of disability or learning difficulty
• 29.1% identified as same sex attracted
What did we find?
• 43.8% of young people we spoke to had internet access at home. Just 3 young people indicated they did not use the internet, while 30.3% accessed the internet from a local library. Only 5 young people accessed the internet from a Youth Centre. This challenges how we traditionally conceptualise the digital divide and highlights the potential of the Internet as a site for promoting health to young people experiencing marginalisation.
• The most popular website amongst participants was Google (27 young people) with social networking sites such as Bebo, myspace and Hi5 also featuring prominently. Interestingly there appeared to be both cultural and gender differences which informed which social networking sites young people utilized.
• A large proportion of young people considered their ICT skills to be of a high standard, stating that they could perform specific tasks ‘really well.’ This is an opportunity for future investigation and it will be of interest as to whether their skills are as advanced as they consider them to be.
• Taking Action had varied meanings amongst those we spoke to and this has implications for promoting civic engagement and community participation. For many of the young people involved in this project, the issues most important to them and those they wanted to take action around are those that have an immediate personal impact, for example being unemployed or poor relationships with local police.
Pilot Workshops
So far we have implemented three pilot workshops in three different settings, engaging a total of 78 young people! All three workshops were heaps of fun and generated some fantastic outcomes including:
• 20 individual actions
• 20 young people signing up to the ActNow e-newsletter
• 2 group/collective actions
• Production of 5 ‘vision stories’ (each comprising a photograph and an accompanying audio clip) for the ActNow website.• Feeling that they can make a positive difference
Early evaluation so far has also been very positive with participants reporting:
• An increased awareness and understanding of social issues
• An increased awareness of how to take action
• Confident to use the skills gained in the workshop in the future
• That the workshop gave them the opportunity to meet new people
A big thanks goes out to the staff and young people who helped make each workshop possible:
• Beanbag Centre at Good Shepard Youth Service, St Albans
• Banyule/Nillumbik Local Learning and Employment Network (LLEN) Cluster Working Community Project
• Koorie Employment Enterprise (KEE), Shepparton
Also, thanks to Inspire Supporter Trent McCarthy who supported the development of the workshops and helped with the Good Sheppard Pilot.
Where to now…
In addition to continuing to pilot and refine the workshop model, we will be uploading the vision stories and photos from the workshop to the ActNow website and also writing up our research findings for publication. We’ll be sure to let you know when they are available, but in the meantime, please don’t hesitate to contact us should you wish to know more.
Michelle Blanchard
Research Officer
Phone: 03 9825 5170
Email: michelle@inspire.org.au
