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Director of Innovations in Civic Participation in London to learn more about CYP

13 July 2007

Susan Stroud, Executive Director of Innovations in Civic Participation (ICP), a Washington based organisation, paid a courtesy visit to the Commonwealth Youth Programme London office on Tuesday 26 June

Ms Stroud was keen to learn more about CYP's support for youth civic participation and said that ICP ‘are eager to get to know the work of our colleagues in other key international institutions working on youth issues’ and to exchange information with CYP about that field.

ICP, a non-for-profit think tank, was set up in 2001 with support from the Ford Foundation. ICP have supported programme and policy developments on civic participation in different parts of the world for the past six years.

ICP seeks to unleash the power of young people to create change in their communities and build essential skills for future success through civic engagement. ICP is the go-to place for global innovation around youth civic engagement through the specific strategies of national youth service and service learning.

ICP seeks to work and change the mindset of organisations which hold the negative view of young people as a problem to be solved rather than a resource for change in their communities.

ICP works in three broad areas. The first area of work is with partners. Partnership gives ICP leverage to achieve its goals.

The second area of work is to develop their own ideas about projects that could be scalable and if implemented could provide a lot of opportunities for young people to contribute to their own life chances. In relation to this, ICP approached the government of India about a four country mapping exercise of youth civic engagement and programming in the south Asia region covering Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. Ms Stroud asked if the pan-Commonwealth Office (PCO) would facilitate contact with the CYP Asia Centre, which PCO agreed to do.

The third area of work is communications and advocacy. This is done mainly through the website, newsletters and building a network of practitioners.

ICP recently wrote a publication for the World Bank Children and Youth Unit on youth service as a strategy for youth development and national development.

Andrew Robertson, CYP’s Publications Officer explained to Susan that he was about to embark on a publication on young people in the political arena for the next Commonwealth Youth Ministers Meeting in May 2008. The working title is ‘Arguing with Young People : Exercises for Political Thinkers’, which he would like ICP to contribute to by writing an article on youth service and civic participation.

Ms Cristal de Saldanha, Advisor for Youth Development and chair of the meeting outlined CYP’s strategic areas in GDYN, YESL and YWET, the work on youth mainstreaming and youth participation, and the CYP Asia regional centre initiatives on youth development indicators, particularly the Malaysian Youth Development Index and Youth Mapping.

Also present at the meeting was Rajkumar Bidla, Programme Officer, and Diane Mensah-Bonsu, Website Coordinator.