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Survey on Youth Leadership Training Programmes - Executive Summary

Between 1997 and 1998, the Commission on Youth carried out a study on civic awareness and moral values of youth in Hong Kong. The study recommended that all youth should undergo leadership training on a continuing basis to prepare young people to be leaders of tomorrow.

Against this background, the Commission on Youth commissioned a study titled "Survey on Youth Leadership Training Programmes" to the Department of Applied Social Sciences, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University with the following three objectives:

  • to conduct a survey on the youth leadership training programmes available in Hong Kong;
  • to assess the adequacy and effectiveness of these training programmes; and
  • to propose a model of youth leadership training in Hong Kong.

The study began in November 1999 and lasted through to March 2000. The findings reveal that:

  • There was no consensual conception of youth leadership, and youth leadership was basically conceived as the possession of abilities in five domains (problem-solving and decision making, relating to others, teamwork and team-building, community awareness and participation, and national/international outlook).
  • Objectives of the existing programmes varied from individual development to a sense of community participation with an emphasis on skills training.
  • Non-governmental organizations organized the majority of the existing youth leadership programmes, but they had insufficient evaluation mechanisms to objectively and systematically assess the outcome of training.
  • Other than government subsidy, private donations and self-finance were also important sources of funding for youth leadership training programmes.

The study recommends, therefore, to enlist the support of all stakeholders to help young people to develop their full potential in order to become future leaders of our society.

Hence, we recommend that:

  • the Government should consider playing a more proactive and forward-looking role in youth leadership training. In the long run, youth leadership training should become an important component of our youth policy;
  • our primary education, secondary education and other formal education should recognize the contribution of youth leadership training programmes and motivate our students to participate in these programmes;
  • commercial sector can also play an important role in youth leadership training;
  • a valid evaluation mechanism for youth leadership training programmes should be set up;
  • granting of subsidy should be tied up with outcomes of evaluation;
  • the 'user-pays' principle should be retained as part and partial of the funding consideration;
  • a modular approach to train the elite leaders, the general youth population, and the under-privileged youth for youth leadership training is proposed. However, emphasis should be placed on the development and training of young elites.