April 5, 2023
Stories
Alumni of KASPEC program in 2022: Monitoring of youth aimed plan and implementation of Bayanzurkh and Bayangol district’s governors 2020-2024 operational plan
There is an urgent need for youth-oriented action programs and plans to solve the problems faced by the young generation, and to identify the obstacles that stunt their development. However, it is unfortunate that the opportunities of young people are limited due to the inadequate activities of government agencies and officials.
Center for Citizenship Education announced a small grant competition to support youth-led NGOs and youth groups and their participation within the framework of the European Union's "All for YOUth, YOUth for All'' project that has been jointly implementing with Caritas Czech Republic and Mongolian Youth Council. The graduates of KASPEC-2022 program were successfully selected for the Small Grant competition and monitored the action programs and plans of Bayanzurkh and Bayangol district governors for 2020-2024 aimed at young people and their implementation.
The project team sent the following official letter to the relevant districts authorities after obtaining the full text of the 2020-2024 action program and plan for the youth of Bayanzurh and Bayangol district governors based on the principle of transparency of the government.
The monitoring result suggested that the Governor of the above-mentioned 2 districts and other affiliated state administrative organisations, councils, departments, offices, and units have access to legal documents, news, and information that are not open nd accessible to the public even thoughand the information that is not classified as state secrets. It does not provide the right of citizens and the public to obtain information by not resolving requests for copies. It was concluded that there is limited support, information provision, and cooperation for the proposals made by the representatives of civil society.
To make this conclusion the team have conducted the following activities towards young people of the selected districts:
- A total of 237 people who volunteered to participate in a questionnaire survey using Google Forms.
- A meeting was held with the youth of the Financial and Economic Red Cross Society to exchange opinions on the problems they face.
- A focus group interview was organized and the opnions of the meeting participants were determined.
To increase public awareness especially young people and influence the policy imeplemnters within the framework of the project:
- Governors have been sent to the Recommendation produced out of the results of the monitroing with the official letter
- Participated in the radio program of Mongolian National Broadcasting radio to disseminate information about the existence of programs and plans for young people and how they should be implemented and monitored.
- Also, articles were published on the Press center and Peak news websites to disseminate information and spread the results of the monitroing .
Due to the insufficient transparency of public service information, lost time to analyse it, and the irresponsibility of workers and officials, our team also encountered cases of knocking on empty doors. In addition, they have learned a lot of lessons from the project. It includes:
- There are many agencies , departments, and councils that are responsible for implementing youth-oriented activities, such as the Family, Children, and Youth Development Department under the District Governor, the Youth Council, and the Social Development Department of the District Governor's Office, but the tasks they are responsible for are not clear. A situation such as a lack of correlation among them was observed.
- There was no clear information about the activities and measures aimed at youth and their implementation included in the action program and plan of the district governor.
- It can be named the main concluiosn of the monitoring the fact that, almost 100% of the participants reached to the one main conclusion that the youth lacked knowledge and information about the functions of the governor and the units that operate in the field of youth in the districts during the focus group interviews with the youth of the Bayangol and Bayanzurkh districts
- The team members agreed that there were problems and challenges due to the things such as studying policy and research not being an interesting topic for young people, and lack of information about privacy questionnaires, which resulted in a situation where the survey did not receive the number of responses originally planned.
"The true desire of these young people, who were formed as a group during KASPEC-2022, is to create a youth-friendly society, to have a government policy that can identify and solve the obstacles faced by young people, and that it is implemented honestly with careful monitoring" said the alumni.
The result of their activities in the media:
https://presscenter.mn/posts/63b3dbea3b6986006ff7578a
