Youth and sustainable livelihoods

I've been thinking about how in Australia's remote indigenous communities, the Solomons and Bougainville (and probably many other places throughout the world), the focus has been on the older generation, on 'leaders'. Yet these places are plagued by violence, where the primary protagonists are young men - young men who have been dispossessed of their cultural, social and economic inheritence. Young men who for various reasons have been dispossessed of the land which traditionally governed every aspect of the social, political, spiritual and political order. They've not only been shut out of their inheritance, but they're told that to be worthwhile, they need an education in the formal education system, and a job in the formal economy. Given that they can't have either of those things, why are we surprised when they get caught up in the excitement and temporary sense of empowerment that physical violence provides?

I know of one community development agency in Australia that's running a "leadership program" that doesn't target those kids that are usually defined as "leaders" - it's not the academic and social over-achievers that are invited to participate. Instead they're inviting the kids who are, in some respects, the very opposite of that.

I think our well-intended attempts at community development, whether it's here or overseas, often miss the mark because we unwittingly reproduce existing power structures. In Australia, when I go through the list of people speaking at "leadership forums" or lists of the people identified as "young leaders", they are still overwhelmingly dominated by people from white, private school, upper middle-class, tertiary educated backgrounds. Similarly, many agencies engaged in community development work abroad work with those who already have economic, political, and social clout. Yet in doing this, we reinforce the status quo, we reinforce the existing distribution of social, economic and political privilege, furthering the marginalisation of those who are most vulnerable.

Should we in fact be offering 'leadership' programs to those that are regarded as 'leaders' in the traditional sense, or should we be seeking to build the 'leadership' skills of those who are most marginalised?