As I switched my Monday evenings during secondary school, from socialising with my friends, to attending youth cabinet meetings, my dad didn’t quite seem as convinced at my choice of what I was doing with my time. My volunteering contributed to receiving my DofE award, as well as a number of other pieces of recognition from school and organisations. Dad was very proud when I received recognition. Those awards didn’t motivate me, but they helped me to explain to others, that what I was doing was valued and important. And this didn’t stop at my dad, as I’ve embarked on my early career, whilst you talk about the experiences you’ve gained through social action, employers are interested in the accolades. I don’t know whether that’s right, but it’s true. In my experience, genuine and appropriate recognition of a young person, means you are giving them a secret weapon to allow them to articulate the contribution they’ve made to their community. And when we recognise a cohort of young people, or a movement, or promote a cause young people are fighting for, we give them a platform to shout louder from. We amplify the change they’re able to make, and that can never be a bad thing.

But I chose my words carefully, and it’s essential to give proper thought to what ‘genuine and appropriate recognition’ means.

Extrinsic benefits vs intrinsic benefits 

The #iwill campaign’s research and experience emphasise the “double benefit” of participating in social action. The benefit for the community and the benefit for young participants. According to the #iwill Learning Hub report on Youth Social Action and Outcomes for Young People, benefits of participation can include character development; increased civic participation and of course positive employment outcomes. Those of us who work with young people see these benefits every day. Young people growing in confidence, developing key skills for their own future and in some case improved mental health.  

The Overjustification Theory suggests that intrinsic motivation decreases when external rewards are given for completing a task. I wonder whether in our enthusiasm to celebrate young people, we sometimes promote opportunities to participate with unrelated external benefits. Is there a risk that we are ultimately decreasing the intrinsic motivation to participate by shifting perception of the benefit to that external reward?  

Celebrating individuals 

As per my introduction to this article, quite often organisations plan awards ceremonies as a way of celebrating young people. The result, of course, is that one young person “wins”. This winner is lifted up as a paragon of youth social action. In most cases the young person in question probably does deserve this. They tend to be passionate, engaged and hardworking. 

However, I suggest that there are many, many other passionate, engaged and hardworking young people who are not being recognised in this way. This approach of choosing a winner surely limits the number of young people that we can celebrate.  

How can we celebrate young people? 

How then, should celebrate young people? A couple of suggestions: 

• Promote youth social action opportunities using the intrinsic benefits. According to the 2018 National Youth Social Action Survey, there has been a decrease in the proportion of young people recognising the benefit to themselves of participating in social action. Maybe if we help young people understand the intrinsic benefits of participating from the beginning, we can also create ways for them to celebrate when they see those benefits for themselves. Train your frontline team to recognise and acknowledge these things in the day to day and explicitly reflect on the intrinsic benefits with young people themselves. 

• Celebration doesn’t have to be public. We don’t have to think of celebration as always being a public display. Simply having our efforts and achievements acknowledged by someone we trust is a powerful encouragement and motivation. Ultimately the relationships we build will allow us to celebrate every young person’s participation in a more meaningful way. 
• Build a culture of celebrating the small moments. Recently I was told about The Magic Moments report created by Swansea University’s College of Human and Health Sciences. In this report care home staff gave short, single paragraph testimonials about simple moments which had meant something. Creating a collage of our own “magic moments” could be a powerful way to celebrate together and not in a way that focuses on one person or group, but instead builds a picture of the impact young people are having. 
• Facilitate opportunities for young people to celebrate each other. There could be real benefits to building a culture in which young people themselves recognise and celebrate each other’s achievements. What structures could you create that would enable young people to do this? Making celebration part of your day to day and allowing young people to highlight and celebrate their peers achievements.  

So, what do we mean by celebrating young people? 

Ultimately the pitfalls come about if we haven’t reflected on why we are celebrating young people and what we mean by celebration. 

Celebrating shouldn’t be seen as an incentive or a reward. Instead let’s reframe it as acknowledging the achievements of our young people on a day to day basis. Let’s see it as a communal practice based on relationships with and between the young people involved in our work.