Youth civil society organizations still remain invisible

In this situation, the capacity for cooperation between youth organizations is quite high.

On January 19 the business centre IMAGURU in Minsk hosted the presentation of the results of the study “Non-Governmental Organizations and Initiative Groups for Cooperation in Addressing Common Objectives”.

The study of the youth CSOs sector that also includes the analysis of the role and influence of the external environment is one of the Sectoral analyses that have been conducting by the Office for European Expertise and Communication (OEEC) since 2012. These studies strive to: “to summarize the existing expert and scientific data regarding the development of specific sectors of the Belarusian civil society, and complement it with quantitative and qualitative studies of the aspects, which have not been studied so far”.

The research was carried out by the Center for European Transformation analysts: Andrei Yahorau, Alena Zuikova, Volha Lashkevich, Andrei Shutau, and Sviatlana Antashkevich.

“This analysis aims to estimate the current state and opportunities for enhancing cooperation between Belarusian civil society youth organizations, as well as between these organizations and their environment. The main subject of the survey is the perceptions of joint actions and initiatives by the

leaders and participants of youth sector organizations, i.e. how they see current and future cooperation,” – note in the OEEC.

For almost six months the analysts were studying the sector with the help of electronic questionnaire survey of randomly sampled youth organizations – about 150 questionnaires were sent to 327 youth organizations. Apart from that, 19 in-depth semi-structured interviews with the sector's leaders and activists and one focus group interview, which included seven participants from among activists of youth organizations functioning in Minsk or at the country level were conducted.

According to Andrei Yahorau, the head of the Center for European Transformation, recovery of the database of youth organizations using open information sources was made (out of the collected body of data – over 800 organizations – all sports, dance, gaming (schools, fighting federations and clubs, fitness clubs, dance clubs, etc.) organizations were intentionally excluded, as most frequently they use the legal form of an NGO but do not conduct any activity beyond organizing training sessions. Besides, all children's organizations were excluded).

The comparison of the youth sector in size to other sectors of civil society organizations was defined.  Regarding the number of registered organizations, this is the third (after sports and charity) biggest sector of civil society organizations (or about 11 per cent of all registered NGOs).

“The sector of youth NGOs is not the largest by the number of organizations, but pretty large by the number of participants. Young people are not deeply involved in the activity of youth organizations. Youth organizations are virtually invisible for the Belarusian youth. The opportunities offered by youth organizations to youth do not match the needs of young people,” – Andrei Yahorau notes. According to the electronic questionnaire survey, 80% of respondents do not believe that youth organizations and initiatives are well known in the society. At the same time, 70% of the respondents think that people "know something" about youth organizations – either heard, read of them, or participated in their activity. Thus, the respondents of the electronic survey perceive visibility of youth organizations as average. In the interviews respondents are conservative in their estimates: youth organizations are "rather poorly known", "insufficiently known", "not very well known", or "I would not say that they are well known". “I.e. the youth organizations themselves doubt their own popularity,” – Andrei Yahorau notes. In this situation, he believes, “they don’t care much about becoming visible: there is no program of cooperation with media, no policy on work with media, no common use of social network”. “Besides, general situation with legal and political conditions also has its influence; it’s fraught with consequences to attract attention”, – the analyst assumes.

The analyst of the Center for European Transformation Alena Zuikova takes note of the geographical distribution of youth organizations: youth organizations and organizations working with youth are mainly found in Minsk – at least 61% of the registered ones. “It means that organizations can be registered in Minsk, but have national scale and work in some towns and villages from the centre. But in fact, very few civil society organizations work in towns or rural area. Sector representatives note that this is a problem – regions suffer from the lack of youth organizations,” – Alena Zuikova says.

“As for the funding, we found out that access to financial resources is not the most topical issue for youth organizations, – the analyst noted. – At least over the past year, 73% of youth organizations more contacted with donors; besides, almost every organization has an international partner.”

There is a problem with organizations-leaders and individual leaders.

As for the main research issue – cooperation, now it’s rather poor: “Out of more than 300 organizations just about 15 organizations are focal (5%), with 5-10 connections. However, the majority of organizations have few relations: up to 5 permanent partners. The group of focal organizations can be called the "core" of the sector – they are closely interlaced with each other.

However, the networks of their partners are very branched, and remote organizations do not have their own relations with the centre. This is the indication that the sector is poorly consolidated and that it is basically rather a number of independently existing groups (regional and/or thematic). The weakness of

internal relations within the sector is the evidence of the low cooperation capacity of youth organizations in addressing common objectives. However, recently there has been a positive trend of enhancing partner relations and search for topics of common interest to enable cooperation (within the last year, 70% of respondents of the electronic questionnaire survey found new partners).”

Respondents believe that to ensure successful cooperation similar organizations and organizations with similar focus should work together. With that, the main cause of failure in the implementation of joint activities, as seen by respondents, is the difference between organizations' objectives.

“Cooperation as such implies understanding that different organizations can in their differing activities reach common goals. For similar organizations this understanding of common goals occurs easier, while for organizations that are different more effort is needed to achieve such understanding. Correspondingly, at the current stage of the development of youth organizations sector, the capacity for cooperation is higher for organizations possessing common characteristics (such as, thematic focus area, target group) and lower for the organizations, which are more distant from each other. Joint activities of youth organizations associated with the engagement in political processes (lobbying, advocacy, change of legislation) is not a priority for youth organizations. Only 20.8% of youth organizations are involved in such activities. For reasons beyond their control it is hard for youth organizations to successfully influence governmental policy; besides, this can provoke risks for organizations and their members. That is why the capacity of youth organizations for the cooperation is higher in politically neutral projects and activities, while with the increase of the political component in cooperation this capacity decreases,” – the study reads.

Why is the capacity of youth organizations for cooperation is still defined as high? “Still, the leaders have general idea about the common mission, shared understanding of the goals of cooperation, and good interpersonal relationships, which also can be used for establishing cooperation”, – Alena Zuikova believes.

Recommendations:

To be more attractive for youth, youth organizations should better study their "consumers" and identify the basis for their offers to the target group.

Belarusian youth organizations should work more actively in the regions, especially in small towns and in rural areas. Due to the lack of entertainment options outside of the capital young people in the regions have a lot of free time and a big potential for work, as basically they do not know what to do with their free time.

Belarusian youth organizations should pay attention to the fact that today no one of the influential people in youth organizations is able to individually foster consolidation – their influence is too limited. However, joint activities of these people could be effective and encouraging for bringing people and organizations together.

Today youth organizations cannot influence youth and other policies. However, such activities are possible and essential, but only in larger coalitions and in a large-scale cooperation with other clusters of civil society organizations of Belarus.

As external, socio-political conditions are an important factor to be considered by youth organizations while planning and cooperating, the organizations, through public communications, should put the improvement of these conditions on the agenda of their cooperation.

So far, shared vision of the organizations' mission and cooperation goals is just an opportunity. To make it real, youth organizations need to build cooperation through regular joint events that are mostly not politicised – festivals, common forums, and thematic campaigns. And move further, because cooperation of youth organizations should focus on their mission and common values of promoting the interests and protecting the rights of the young people.