The City of Montreal, in collaboration with Montreal’s Youth Council, is holding a series of public consultations to evaluate the lines of communication between the youth and the City. The floor will be open to people between the ages of 12 and 30, so even the not-so-very-young folks such as myself can make themselves heard.
What motivates young people to become involved citizens? Do young people have access to the services and information that interests them? Do youth feel they can make their voices heard?
Young people’s experience of public space is a topic that I have been delving into since I wrote about it here so I plan on attending at least one or two of the meetings. In all, there are four dates and locations:
On the topic of communication…I found out about this consultation only because I was fortunate enough to stumble upon an advertisement in tiny-print in the pages of the Journal Métro (my bike was in the shop so I was stuck on transit for the weekend). Further searching took me to a press release with the exact same text on the City of Montreal web page (pdf). Based on these descriptions, it sounds like the city and Youth Council are following the formula where where audience members take turns on the microphone addressing a panel of elected officials. The press release promises that introductory documentation about this consultation is available at the Accès Montréal offices or on these websites: www.ville.montreal.qc.ca/commissions and www.ville.montreal.qc.ca/cjm. As far as I can tell, the first site has no clear connection and the second is a dead link.
Any ideas come to mind on how the City might improve communication with youth?
3 comments
Maybe they could start by hiring youths for summer jobs (cleaning parks, setting up/taking down festivals, etc.), and have older ‘youths’ be responsible for them. That might help the city better understand the issues which are of concern to youths and even establish some ‘lines of communication’ with them.
Oh I forgot – the city is a union shop. No temporary employees.
Bonjour,
J’ai été informée que vous recherchiez plus d’information concernant la consultation publique à venir sur le sujet des communications entre la Ville et les jeunes Montréalaises et Montréalais. Il s’agit d’une initative de la Commission du conseil municipal sur les services aux citoyens en collaboration avec le Conseil jeunesse de Montréal dont la nouvelle adresse est cjmtl.com. Nous vous remercions de votre intérêt et espérons vous compter parmi les participants à la consultation. N’hésitez pas à communiquer avec moi pour toute question. Salutations,
Linda Lajeunesse
Secrétaire recherchiste
Division des élections et du soutien aux commissions
Direction du greffe
275, rue Notre-Dame Est
bureau R-134, Montréal, Téléphone : 514 872-7552
http://www.ville.montreal.qc.ca/commission
Hello there,
We are glad to see that the public consultations are already creating a certain buzz. It is quite unfortunate that the press release provided erroneous information. Here are the correct links:
Conseil jeunesse de Montréal: http://www.cjmtl.com/
Commission sur les services aux citoyens: http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/portal/page?_pageid=4617,8231573&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL
You can also follow us on twitter: http://twitter.com/cjmtl
and Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Conseil-Jeunesse-de-Montreal/104300136278839
We hope to see you at the public consultations. Thank you for your interest. And spread the word !
Jessy
Conseil Jeunesse de Montréal