Taming the 'beast'

Attending the regional Youth Stakeholders meeting in Noumea one can't fail to be struck by the magnitude and scope of players and actors involved in youth development in the Pacific. If Robyn describes the complexities of coordinating SPC's regional HIV and STIs project as the 'complex beast' what words can we reserve for regional coordination of youth activities?

Despite the obvious challenges of coordination, important progress was made at the meeting in coming up with a workable strategy for improved coordination and planning with the Pacific Youth Strategy 2010 as the guiding document and the Pacific Youth Council as the umbrella organisation to facilitate regional coordination. This is sound since the PYS2010 has been widely endorsed by all those involved and the PYC has coverage and a mandate from all Pacific island countries. Some of the downloadable papers from the Youth Stakeholders meeting discuss this issue of coordination.

However, how do we operationalise this strategy for better coordination? It was clear from the meeting that there is some ambiguity regarding roles and responsibilities of the various youth organisations and agencies involved. How do we ensure that all relevant organisations are involved and that any culture of not sharing and collaboration is discouraged. For example, it was clear from the meeting that there are barriers to communication and collaboration with churches and faith-based organisations (FBOs). Churches and FBOs are most times critical to the delivery of youth services in remote and rural areas. How do we ensure that they are included in coordination and planning? Is there a role for the Pacific Council of Churches here?

Parallel to a clear definition of roles and responsibilities is the need for a comprehensive communication strategy at the regional level. This will go a long way to highlighting roles and responsibilities and reporting mechanisms but should go beyond this to awareness and advocacy from donor to the general public. This will require attention to training and capacity-building in communications and partnership-working among our Pacific youth leaders. This is vital if coordination is to work. It would be very wrong to assume that these are roles that youth can automatically assume and take on without support. In addition, there will be a need for youth mentoring and internships to be provided by experienced organisations.

And never forgetting the need for young people to be actively involved in all aspects of the above!