Guest blog by Dorah Asera, Carl Geckoban, Steven Nining, David Rupa, Janet Yembinei
Twelve weeks ago, eight (8) staff from the National Youth Development Authority of Papua New Guinea signed up for the Harvard University’s PDIA Course, delivered through The Voice Incorporated, in partnership with the Australian Government. Out from the eight (8), five (5) enthusiastic youth development workers from various backgrounds within the agency were clustered together to form a team in addressing one of the most critical and important problems, which is the youth development agenda.
The team decided to call themselves Youth Advocates because they all have the same passion for youth empowerment and have been working in the space for some time.
The second week of the course saw Team Youth Advocates identifying the three main aspects of the functions and purpose of the youth councils, which are; the operationalization of the administration of the youth councils, the disengagement and ignorance of youth empowerment; and lack of commitment, resourcing and accountability of maintaining the youth councils.
Just to put the problem into perspective, the team identified innumerable problems in the 22 Districts where the National Youth Development Authority had already established youth councils. Issues such as the exclusion of youth in decision making and the disengagement of youth leads to social disorder, high rates of unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse, violence, crime etc. These longstanding social issues that were present in the districts, especially where youth councils have been established; defeats the purpose of the Youth Councils as opposed to having this mechanism as a vehicle for youth service delivery in the country.
Failure to resolve these youth issues, poses a threat to the national security, contributes to economic instability and risk to international business and opportunities for investment at a large scale.
Further examining this, there is no representative of youth at the District Development Authority Board and the Provincial Assembly, where budget and developmental decisions are made. This means that, there is no priority and consideration given to youth development which consequently results the aforementioned prolonged social issues.
Additionally, there is still lack of resources and funding commitments, which fails to address the immediate interventions to counter youth development problems. Infrastructures such as Youth Resource Centers and innovation hubs that could serve the youth in leading productive lives and contributing to nation building are jeopardized. Most of this is due to high levels of systemic and systematic corruption, loopholes in the legal frameworks that do not accommodate youth voice and recognition as well as the alignment of institutional structures that administer the work of youth development in the country with lack of manpower and budgets to support youth workers at subnational level. Incapability becomes the result of lacking capacity for institutional strengthening.
The ignorance and lack of investment in the potential of youth means the future of this country is questionable, especially when sixty percent (60%) of its population is below thirty (30) and their needs and aspirations are not fulfilled.
When the upcoming generation of youth become adults, the statistics of illiteracy and poverty rise with them and their children.
The Learnings from this course
One key lesson drawn from this course is Iterative Adaptation. It highlights the importance of iterative adaptation, which involves continuous learning, iterating, and adapting solutions based on feedback and new information whenever there is a meeting conducted with the authorizers or the beneficiaries of the problem statement.
The team has also highlighted on Problem Focus; This PDIA course teaches the importance of focusing on the problem itself, using tools like the 5 Whys and Fishbone diagram to deconstruct the problem statement and better understand it more. The team applied the core principles learned from PDIA, that the “answers to a particular problem cannot be pre-planned or developed in a passive or academic fashion by specialists applying knowledge from other contexts. However, it must emerge through active iteration, experimentation and learning.”
David Rupa recalls “The team had to revisit the drawing board multiple times to brainstorm and break down into root causes, identify entry points, and plan out actions, and when we failed to get things done, we stopped to reflect, and then iterate through a new approach, and adopt a way to a solution, to make quick gains in order for us to make bigger gains in the long run.”
Addressing the elephant in the room
One of the biggest lessons the team reflected on was having the courage to address sensitive findings and addressing these critical issues with authorizers.
“It is important to get approval from authorizers because the authorizers influence which projects are chosen, how obedience is extracted from subordinate employees, which actions are approved and ratified, and who gets rewarded for what, and how.” Dorah Aserah, quotes form her diary of the key lessons learned.
The team gained ideas to improve authority, acceptance or ability where the change space seemed to be limited.
The experimental iterative progress
For the iteration process, the team conducted their own inquiries into the operations of the established youth Development Councils basically to find out why they were not functioning properly.
They conducted interviews with youth representatives, Community Development Officers in the Districts and other government workers and found out that there are many factors which contribute or affect their operations.
The team further found out the following:
- Local MPs do not recognize and support the youth councils;
- Lack of youth representation in the District Development Authority (DDA) Board or rather political appointments are favored;
- Youth Programs are not captured in the DDA’s budget and plan;
- Local MPS and government workers at the DDA and Provincial levels do not understand and appreciate the function of Youth Councils
Major root-cause identified through iteration
To find out more insights into the problem, the team sent two members to Alotau District and Esa Ela District Youth Development Councils to further investigate.
Interestingly, the team found out that there is a missing link between NYDA, Youth Councils, the Provincial Governments and DDAs because of the following reasons:
- NYDA does not have its own Youth Development Officers in the Districts;
- CDOs support the work of youths but they have multiple tasks and do not give ample time and attention to youth issues;
- Differences in organizational structures were apparent, causing uncertainty in the operations between the three (3);
- NYDA’s powers and functions are more centralized, meaning there is no or very little gap for DDAs and Provincial Governments to come in and assist Youth Councils.
- Lack of engagement of youth volunteers;
- Lack of clearly defined powers and functions of the youth representatives;
- Lack of capacity building program for CDOs.
The team therefore proposed to redefine their problem statement in their fishbone diagram to deal with one specific issue which became a new entry point for iteration which is “lack of clear demarcation of powers, functions, roles and responsibilities of CDOs and others at the sub-national level.”
Immediate iterations were made by the team that found the opportunity to discuss the main problem with their primary authorizer, who is the Director General of NYDA, Mr Joe Itaki, and he promised to support to Team Advocates in finding a solution addressing this problem with other departmental heads within the Ministry of Community Development Youth and Religion.
Post PDIA iterations
The team’s new approach to the problem statement is aimed at clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of the Community Development Officers, Youth Volunteers, Youth Representatives, and others involved in youth work in the district so that their area of responsibility does not unnecessarily encroach the jurisdiction of others, thereby causing frustration and hiccups in progressing youth activities.
This will involve carefully plotting the positions within the existing structures of the Government. As much as possible, we will involve the respective Provincial Governments, Districts, NYDA and the National Volunteer Service so that there is no duplication of positions, roles and responsibilities. On the other hand, we will dialogue with them and maintain effective communication and coordination.
Application of PDIA
The team members have learned a lot in this course. The problem they have identified in their fishbone is a big problem affecting NYDA at the moment. Due to the same reason, NYDA has embarked on legislation reform, which is reviewing the National Youth Development Authority Act 2014. Four Regional Consultation workshops have been completed already.
“One of the key outcomes of the amendment in the Act seeks to deal with our problem statement. Hence, we propose to have a dialogue between the respective Provincial Governments, DDAs, National Volunteer Services and Community Development and extend the number of authorizers and convince them to work in coordination rather than working individually and in isolation.” Steven Nining says during the reflections.
We propose to review existing structures and dissolve all the uncertainties and rigidities existent in there to allow easy communication, coordination, and implementation of tasks. That can be achieved through creating positions in the existing government structures and defining the job descriptions with clear roles and responsibilities.
Problem-solving is part of life. The more you are involved in finding a solution step by step, the more interesting it becomes. And once you get there, you are more satisfied than before and you will be motivated to solve more problems!
This blog was written by participants who completed a 12-week PDIA for PNG online action learning program from August – November 2024. 31 participants successfully completed this program.