Challenges of Youth Outreach Efforts in Singapore
Currently, I am working on 2 separate projects which aim to look at the challenges of engaging the youth population in the community.
The teams that I’m working with focus on youth who are going through different changes in their lives, and might require some support and guidance to navigate this phase of their life. In particular, the common theme between these 2 projects is youth outreach efforts.
Impact of Covid-19 on Youth Outreach
With the spread of Covid-19, the strength of the engagement between youth and social service outreach teams seem to be spreading thin. As the number of covid infections rises within the community, school is being shifted from the physical campus to home-based online learning, while youth centres and public areas in the neighbourhood no longer see the usual crowd.
Where are the youth spending their time now?
How are they during this period of time?
With rapid changes in the rules, it is vital for youth outreach teams to adapt fast. When speaking to the teams and working with them to understand the challenges of youth outreach programmes, it’s evident that some efforts are not replaceable through the setup of digital spaces and channels.
The Pain Points
It is important to note that even before the onset of the pandemic, youth engagement has always been a challenging area of work for the social work sector.
Some of the pain points shared about why digital efforts the teams have tried are not as effective in engaging youth:
- Fatigue over Zoom engagement (students have their academic lessons over video calls too)
- Youth don’t turn up for the Zoom activities that they have signed up for
- They are no longer able to hang out at their usual spots in the neighbourhood
- Youth who respond or reach out via social media platforms might be of a different profile from youth that they find hanging out in other physical community spaces
How Design Can Help Reduce the “Engagement Cliff”
In a recent article posted by Behavioral Scientist, it’s interesting to see how student motivation was studied and that contributed to more targeted efforts to redesign the High School experience for students in Colorado.
They discovered this phenomenon called the “engagement cliff”.
Back in 2009 to 2016, Gallup conducted a survey in the US to find out why students become increasingly less engaged as they continue through their studies. While 74% of surveyed fifth-graders are engaged with school, by a big difference, only 32% of surveyed 11th-graders are engaged.
So what caused this situation to happen?
An additional source of data revealed that in more than 230,000 students, only about half of respondents said they thought what they learned in school was relevant to the real world.
Within the article, the case study of how Cañon City’s school redesign focuses on the alignment of programmes with the student’s goals and interests. Apart from giving the students more opportunities to study what they were more interested in, they rethink how the school could partner with the local business community.
What made the community buy-in possible:
- Introducing local internship and capstone research projects of their choice
- Ensuring there’s relatedness in what the students study, with the realities of how they can apply the skills and knowledge attained in the workforce
- Creating value for both the students and the community
No One-Size Fits All
While the demographics and cultural context of the Gallup study and redesign of the High School experience in the US are different from the projects I’m currently working on in Singapore, there seems to be a common direction that:
- Studying the target group’s motivation and perception of the programmes they are receiving generates useful data
- It is also likely to help create new approaches that the students are more open to accept
From a design perspective, there is more complexity to the problem as we continue to dive deeper into the challenges and map out areas of possible interventions.
While I continue to work on my existing projects, there are some questions worth exploring during the research stages:
- How do youth perceive the value of participating in the outreach efforts carried out by social service outreach teams?
- How do youth relate themselves to the community they are in?
- How could local businesses and communities in Singapore support the efforts being carried out by social service outreach teams?
As our communities step into recovery from the pandemic, there is a need to continue exploring new ways for how we can forge connections between different groups of people in the society, and create stronger support networks for our youth.
Have you had any experience in participating or carrying out youth social innovation projects? I would love to hear about you and your team's experience!
