“Now is the moment to give young people the power to determine our future.”
That’s the message from a group of international young ambassadors to their governments. From January to June this year, the group - hailing from civics programmes in Aotearoa, Australia, and the USA - came together to bring local voices to global issues.
NZ Youth MPs Alice McIntosh, Charlotte Cornwall, Luke Orbell, and Danica Loulie-Wijtenburg. Photo: Larry McMyler
Including representatives who hail from Virginia’s Youth & Government program from Virginia, the Youth Parliament of Victoria, as well as Aotearoa New Zealand’s Youth Parliament (which took place on 19 and 20 July), the group crafted a joint statement calling on their respective governments to address an issue identified as particularly pressing for rangatahi globally.
“Despite our different backgrounds, we all had the same issues at heart, particularly regarding the rights of indigenous peoples and youth in civics, which was the issue we decided to focus on,” said Charlotte Cornwall, who represents Judith Collins as a Youth MP.
In their joint statement, the Kiwi delegates - Cornwall, Alice McIntosh, Luke Orbell and Danica Loulie-Wijtenburg - called on New Zealand's government to “empower rangatahi to feel confident engaging with government on all levels with compulsory, comprehensive, historically - and culturally - conscious civics education.”
Loulie-Wijtenburg, who made history at this year’s Youth Parliament as the first Youth Clark, said issues transcending national borders were discussed prior to the drafting of their joint statement.
“We heard about a range of topics from the need to decolonise our institutions, to the importance of rainbow safe spaces, to health worker shortages and out of that we narrowed it down to our top three topics, which were re-indigenising institutions, youth civics and more broadly, youth civic engagement.”
Nicole Yaneza Bagatsing and Shenei Penaia, members of the Victoria Youth Parliament and two of the Australian delegates to the Global Youth Civics programme. Photo: Larry McMyler
While they believe that this country has a lot more work to do in this area, the group found that civics education in Aotearoa was more developed than in Australia or the USA.
“For New Zealand, we focused on more consistent and more comprehensive education. For the others, it seemed they were starting at a much earlier point," Loulie-Wijtenburg said.
Cornwall added that “we all had the same idea of civics education, but the way that we all approached it and the outcomes we wanted were very country-specific, which was cool to see”.
The Kiwi representatives also noted an increased importance of civics education in light of the drawing from Parliament's Biscuit Tin of Golriz Ghahraman’s Member’s Bill on electoral reform which, if passed, would see Aotearoa’s minimum voting age lowered by two years to 16.
Loulie-Wijtenburg said that “more people being able to vote is really important, but that needs to go hand in hand with being supported to make an educated vote, and being able to understand the system we’re working within”.
While the government has released civics materials designed as part of the School Leavers' Toolkit which are designed to fill this gap, they remain optional in schools. This means many students are left with little to no understanding of the basic functioning of our democracy.
A 2019 survey from charity group Seed Waikato found that just 62 percent of young people in Waikato were planning to vote in their local elections 59 percent didn’t know how to cast a vote in their local elections.
The ambassadors concluded that while young people showed clear desire and ability to combat the issues they face, the lack of adequate civics education holds them back.
Access to civics education is an issue which all the delegates identified as being of paramount importance internationally.
“Civic education is important because us young people are directly feeling the impact of our civic structures. We all feel the presence of our government structures and policies in our everyday lives,” said Nicole Yaneza Bagatsing, a member of the Victoria Youth Parliament in Australia.
*Larry McMyler is a member of the Youth Press Gallery which takes the role of independent media reporting on Youth MPs and Youth Parliament 2022. This article can be republished freely on your platform subject to the following conditions:
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