As a part of FRC’s ongoing conversations for community-led change, FRC spoke to young change-makers on the theme – Changemaking in partnership with youth. The conversations centred on sharing knowledge and experience of their respective areas of expertise alongside discussing the availability or lack of support systems for young changemakers.
The overall landscape for young change-makers
The conversation highlighted the challenges young people face in their respective fields of expertise concerning participation in decision making bodies, lack of funding and accountability on the part of the funders. Central to the discussion was the apparent paucity of young people in most organizations. This numerical paucity makes it difficult for them to influence organizational approaches to concerned issues. Additionally, the discussion brought to attention the lack of funds for young people to participate in virtual and embodied sites of knowledge production, dissemination, and exchange. Thus, stressing on the fact that such practices act as a major setback limiting young people’s agency to influence knowledge production and dissemination. This is compounded by bias in opportunities for fellowships, funding and grants for young people for capacity building and leadership development. Often the selection processes demand education and experiences obtained in the global north, thus, significantly limiting access to individuals from the global south.
The discussion underlined how funders play an essential role in effectively bridging this gap. It laid emphasis on the adoption of Feminist Participatory Action model as a guide for initiating participatory philanthropy built on top of the core of flexible funding. Highlighting its potential as an effective alternative ensuring equal access to funding and grant opportunities for individuals from all sections of the society.
“there is little space for sharing the mental health toll when being exposed to vulnerable communities and their trauma, this area is majorly underfunded and requires attention.”
Renewing the discussion on accountability this set of conversations emphasised the significance of:
- Understanding accountability not only as a time bound principle, limited for the duration of a project and ceasing with implementation and impact making.
- Reimagining the idea of accountability on the principle and ethics of care, whereby, accountability includes provisions for remunerations and care for those working on the ground on a daily basis.
Extending on the issue of remuneration and care, the conversation emphasised the need for discontinuing the malpractice of relying on young people’s unpaid labour as interns and volunteers by organizations. Necessitating that young people’s time and labour be valued equally and compensated adequately.
Additional insights from the conversations requested attention towards the aspects of mental health concerning young people involved with vulnerable communities, in the speaker’s words “there is little space for sharing the mental health toll when being exposed to vulnerable communities and their trauma, this area is majorly underfunded and requires attention.”
Understanding the digital landscape to support young people
This discussion concentrated on the issue of digital accessibility, digital movements, and campaigns. The conversation determined accessibility as the primary challenge to the idea of a digital world. Deliberating that the concept of the digital includes all forms of digital technology, majority of which are inaccessible to marginalised groups. The discussion underlined the salience of digital technology in bridging the gap between different worlds and facilitating knowledge exchange between them. In an era of digital overdrive, and misappropriation of issues by many voices, the process of cutting through the digital noises was accented as an invariable step towards gaining support and securing funds for digital campaigns and movements. Concurrently, it is essential to recognize and support novel and young voices configuring some of these campaigns and movements. The discussion also deliberated for the need to discard the binary opposites of online vs offline when considering funding, stressing that funding is requisite to all forms of campaigns and movements. It is thus essential to acknowledge the efforts dedicated towards sustaining digital movements and campaigns comprising new and innovative voices. This is closely linked to regular funding requirements that are crucial for both the sustenance of the campaigns, the people involved in these movements and achieving the objectives.
There is a need to discard the binary opposites of online vs offline when considering funding, funding is requisite to all forms of campaigns and movements.
To enable the usage of digital spaces as an effective and meaningful medium, the discussion called to attention the need for creating creative spaces for young people to express their ideas whilst also facilitating an interactive space for the parents. This is an essential need of the hour considering the significant role that digital communication and cultures play in the configuration of young people’s mindset.
Exploring interventions for healthy masculinities: notes from a young practitioner
The central topic of the conversation pertained to the concept of healthy forms of masculinities and its elucidation as a key component towards realizing gender justice. This is closely tied with the indispensable role feminist perspectives and feminist action models play in fostering and realizing the ideas of healthy masculinities. The discussion identified the heteronormative separatist approach to gender, underlying many cultural and institutional practices in India as the basis for gender injustice and violence. Underscoring that this approach has a debilitating and harmful effect on all genders and perpetuates the culture of gender-based violence and impunity. To overcome this, a simple and effective path suggested by the practitioner was to foreground and bring to attention (of children and communities) the notion of friendship as a key component alongside feminist approaches to realize the objective of a gender just society. Innovatively introducing young boys and men to feminist discourses through feminist capacity building methodologies, and context specific exercises is essential in this regard. This experiential engagement is intertwined with small but effective practices of personal transformation that practitioners in the field can exemplify. A small but significant requisite for healthy masculinities is “fostering a masculinity that listens” to understand the asymmetrical power dynamics underlying gender relations. This discussion highlighted the importance of adopting ethics of care to not only address issues of gender injustice and toxic masculinities but also as a practice in funding relationships when supporting young people. Ethics of care rooted in the idea of inter-personal relationships is conducive to fostering trust in relationships between grant-makers and recipients.