Youth voice for sustainable democracy

= Welcome to this planning page - get involved! = This is the open planning page for engagement activity to support people who might face barriers as young people getting involved in using open government approaches to influence the decisions that affect them. Please edit this page with your ambitions and ideas.

= Open Government Pioneers Project - September Event with Young Scot = See the EventsBrief - THIS EVENT IS CURRENTLY IN PLANNING.

= Erasmus Funding = We are currently exploring how we might build on the work of the Open Government Pioneers Project over the coming year through Erasmus. This is the open planning page for engagement activity to support people who might face barriers as young people getting involved in using open government approaches to influence the decisions that affect them. Please edit this page with your ambitions and ideas.

Project Description
'''From low wages and a lack of housing to food insecurity and poor health, we are a long way from being the society we would like to be. But we should live in a place where people can satisfy their basic needs and enjoy a good quality of life without compromising future generations to come.'''

Governments alone cannot solve the problems of today, yet conventional approaches to decision making and policy design means that much of the power still sits in government. This imbalance between elected politicians and technocrats and the people they serve limits our abilities to find the right solutions to ensure people’s needs are identified and met.

More transparent, accountable and participative government is key to reinvigorating democracy in Scotland. By acting openly, with integrity and with the people, governments can play their part in the much needed shift towards co-produced policy design where real transformational change is most likely to occur.

In 2015, Scotland became one of the first countries to sign up to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These 17 goals are as close as the world has come to agreeing a strategy to achieve prosperity and equality on a planet that works for all.

Scotland is required to demonstrate its work to achieve the goals. Civil society and citizens across Scotland can use the SDGs and the political commitment from the Scottish Government as leverage to achieve real change at a national and local level.

The goals also provide a framework to begin community focused conversations about what matters to people. They can help us engage in constructive conversations about the local relevance of the 17 goals, better understanding what is particularly important across different communities and what the priorities of government should be.

Through using the SDGs as the framework to engage community stakeholders and residents to understand the issues that people care about most, we can begin to collaboratively problem solve how government must work to bring about change.

Not only will this approach help us to understand what Scotland’s priorities should be in order to progress towards the goals, it gives citizens the space to understand the barriers in their way, from disempowerment or a lack of communication, to rigid structures and diminished resources. It also gives people a voice over how government and public services should work.

Significantly, both the Open Government and SDG agendas have political buy in. This presents a unique opportunity to further legitimise the presence of people and communities in decision making and policy design.

In May 2016 Scotland was announced as one of 15 ‘sub-national’ governments and civil society partnerships worldwide to be part of a pioneer programme to take the principles of open government to levels of governance closer to citizens’ everyday interests.

In 2015, the First Minister pledged that Scotland would lead the way to deliver a more equal, more just world. In signing Scotland up to the Sustainable Development Goals, the Scottish Government made a bold statement of intent not just to the people of Scotland but to the world. The goals have since become a key element of the Global Citizenship strand of Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence.

We have developed a loose structure for the project, but Open Government is not about telling people what to think and do, it’s about asking the right questions to ensure real progress can be made. If successful, we will be working with our partners to use a co-design approach throughout the whole project including developing appropriate objectives. At this point, our objectives are:

Our ambition is to secure youth voice in open democracy

We don't want youth to be a barrier, we want young people to be taken seriously in discussions about decisions that affect people

We want to ensure a frank and honest sharing of perspectives on how young people can get a greater voice in their democracy

We want to ensure these ideas are shared and discussed between young people in Scotland and other countries

Participants Profile
TBC

Learning Outcomes
We will be using the Participative Democracy Certificate, an award that recognises young people's involvement in decision making processes. This constitutes 20 hours and is worth 2 credits at SCQF level 5. It is £12 plus vat for each young person which helps with sustainability and growth of the awards. We will deliver the award as part of your programme.

Programme Requirements:

The programme of activity should contain the following components Portfolio of Evidence:
 * 4 hours of research undertaken independently by each young person (this could be speaking to other young people in the area about needs, community profiling etc. They would then do a presentation on findings but it could be delivered to the rest of the group)
 * 6 hours of training on specific skills such as communication, setting ground rules, decision making, working in groups,
 * 8 hours of recorded decision making meetings
 * 2 hours of reflection by young people

This should lead to the young person developing a portfolio which should include 6 key sources of evidence

The young person's presentation on research findings
 * 1) The Individual Observation Report for Task 1
 * 2) The Individual Observation Report for Task 2
 * 3) A record or minutes of meetings demonstrating their engagement in decision making processes
 * 4) A Support Worker’s Observation Report validating the Participants  involvement in the decision making meetings and     reflecting on their development
 * 5) The participant’s reflective journal/diary

Current activities
SCVO currently host the Open Government Pioneers Project, set up to build the capacity of citizens and civil society across the United Kingdom to contribute and input to policy-making and service delivery in progressing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO), in partnership with the Wales Council for Voluntary Organisations (WCVA), Involve, and Northern Ireland Environment Link, has been awarded a £500k Big Lottery Fund grant to work together over two years to support people to engage and challenge their governments to serve them better. There will be a particular focus in supporting people who are not normally heard in the decisions that affect them, and the connection between citizens and devolved governments of the UK home nations. The project is formally linked to the international Open Government Partnership, where governments and civil society have been given an equal say in the commitments made by 70 countries to be more open. It will use open government commitments to help people secure progress towards the SDGs to eradicate poverty, tackle inequality and sustain natural resources at home and abroad.

At the heart of the Open Government Pioneers initiative is growing the movement of people and organisations that want to actively participate in their governments at Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland levels. The focus for the project is securing government actions and commitments at the devolved UK nation level, using the Sustainable Development Goals as a shared framework for progress and strengthening the role of civil society as a key stakeholder, and conduit for citizens, in open governance reform and sustainable development

We will be using a mix of seminars, webinars, meetups, online digital platforms and crowdsourcing policy analysis to achieve these aims. It is a new and innovative approach which will encourage and support new digital ways for people to come together openly in order to secure change from their governments. There is a strong international dimension to this project, as the project aims to build on the global Pioneer status that Scotland has been given as part of the international Open Government Partnership. The project looks to make the most of the opportunity that an Open Government agenda provides to secure progress within the UK home nations towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals. On a practical level, the project will build bring together and skill up people who want to participate more directly in their government in the UK home nations. It will support the sharing of learning and practical ways of using open government approaches with people from other countries. And it will ensure that participation by citizens has a real influence on government policy at the UK devolved nation level.

As part of our outreach, we are holding a number of engagement events in Scotland, approximately 9 in total. We will first focus our attention on equalities events, which will be facilitated by our equalities partners and take place in May/June 2017. In the first instance, our partners include Young Scot, Inclusion Scotland and CEMVO. Our partners will be supporting the facilitation and engagement with attendees at each event. Our work with Young Scot provides the starting point of .......

As part of the project, SCVO has picked up a facilitator role of a group of stakeholders currently working around the SDGs established to with three broad aims: Through these connections, we will be drawing on the work of others in these area to ensure that our work links up to what is happening across Scotland with young people and the SDGs. Our partners in the bid, IDEAS, are working with organisations across Scotland to hold a series of youth events with Schools as part of its Young Citizen Advocates initiative in the run-up to 2018's Year of Young People. These events will have a clear focus on young people having greater influence over political decisions that affect their lives, and will add to the wider evidence back that will support our future youth events.
 * Coordination: Space to share who's doing what and link folk together
 * Outreach: Work together to increase public awareness and engagement
 * Delivery and Scrutiny: Supporting the implementation in Scotland

Co-design
Partners Young Scot will be involved in all key milestones of the project, and their contribution would be to support the facilitation and engagement with young people, using a co-design approach across all stages of the initiative. The co-design approach can have a significantly positive impact on decision-making and policy-making, but young people will need to be involved as full collaborators and partners in the process, right through to implementation of solutions. This process will .....

Activity
Partners in the project, Young Scot, will play a key role in supporting the facilitation and engagement with young people, using a co-design approach across all stages of the initiative. As an organisation, Young Scot have developed an iterative menu of different methods which are holistic, flexible and accessible to suit a variety of strategic impacts and objectives. From idea jams, Youth Investigation Teams, experience mapping to conversation days and focus groups.

Phases
Phase One: Set-up (October 2017 - January 2018) Phase Two: Induction & Training (January - February 2018) Phase Three: Exploration (March - April 2018) Phase Three: Co-creation (May - July 2018)
 * Working with Partners to develop co-design approach
 * Development of personal development approach for participants
 * Selection of participants and introductory work
 * Participants will attend the full two days of the Gathering 2018 Third Sector Conference
 * This will form part of the participants' induction and will include as series of training sessions on specific skills such as communication, setting ground rules, decision making, working in groups etc. to ensure participants are well positioned to participate in the programme. Participants will each receive a personal development plan to monitor progress throughout the series. An engaging the community training session be held before any further activity
 * There will also be an opportunity for participants to engage with over 100 exhibitors, and a packed programme featuring more than 60 workshops, seminars and training sessions. Participants will be supported to meet with organisations and attend sessions relevant to the project.
 * Using the expertise of our partners, this phase will uncover the issues through gathering insights and genuine experiences from young people
 * Independent research will then be conducted by the participants
 * Participants will deliver their findings to peers and explore these

Participants will have selected one of three areas to discuss further with experts who will co-create solutions with participants. Phase Four: Reflection (September 2018) Phase Five: Recommendations and Review (October - November 2018)

Discussion framework
This framework recognises the difficulties of engaging people around such terms as open government and sustainable development. Rather than beginning conversations with what we want, it seeks to start with the issues that matter most to people before introducing why these concepts later on.

Discussions of this nature will not only help to support participants to develop new ideas and solutions to complex problems, it will allow us to collect powerful stories that can be used to help others come to their own conclusions and form their own opinions over the way forward. Research shows that real stories matter, and the conversations that take place here will form key persuasive evidence to shape future policy responses and next steps around Open Government and the SDGs. THE DISCUSSION

Developing a conversation around what matters to people in their community. PARTICIPANTS

Both we and our partners must carefully consider the personal development aspect to this work, to ensure participants leave the room with the confidence and tools to engage further in this area.

We are also keen to ensure that the events we hold link up to one another to ensure that a conversation exists across the all of our outreach, and that different groups are not put in boxes. People end up speaking to people they already agree with, which is why we want to strengthen those links between networks.

Our partners will be best placed to determine how this could work. For example, success could be measured across the following areas: Activity