CivicShip - DemocracyCo

Announcing

Deliberative Democracy Scholarship for Young People

Involving young people actively in democracy!

A series of recently concerning results in civics understanding and young peoples’ support for democracy around the world tell us that we need to be engaging our young people more in our democracy.

72% of Australian students do not understand the basics of democracy

- just 28 per cent of Australian year 10 students and 43 per cent of year 6 students are proficient in civics.

44% of young people around the world feet that military rule was a good way to run the country (Open Society 2023)

1 in 3 Gen Z voters in Australia are prepared to support practices including encouraging violence, sending threatening messages to MP’s, damaging property and lying – to advance a cause they care about. (McKinnon Foundation 2024)

Given this context, it is critical that we act now to improve understanding of our democracy through civics education by enabling and empowering young people to be more active citizens in it.

As an organisation that practices democracy, we want to help support young to not only learn about our democracy, but to live it.

Deliberative processes provide opportunities for young people to be active citizens.

However, we find that young people face greater obstacles to participation in deliberative processes than almost any other group. Because citizens juries, and similar processes are generally held on weekends and in the evenings, young people find it hard to get involved, as they are commonly also casual workers.

We think young people should have at least the same opportunities as other people, if not more, as it is their future we are shaping after all.

Benefits of participation in a deliberative process

Deliberative democracy (citizens juries, participative budgeting etc) offers opportunities for young people to live democracy and in doing so grow their democratic muscles. Participating in a deliberative process involves participants critically analysing the information they receive, listening actively, disagreeing respectfully, feeling comfortable sharing their opinion, empathising and ultimately working to find common ground.

These skills are all central to civic and democratic participation.

We also know that the empowerment provided through a deliberative process – contributes to personal wellbeing as participants build positive relationships and provide a sense of personal achievement. They are also lots of fun!

The need to get young people involved in our democracy is critical and the benefits to them as individual’s are extensive. This is why we are trialling our first “Civic’s-ship”, a scholarship program to support young people in participating in their democracy.

About the Scholarship in Civics

The Civic’s-ship includes

A Deliberative wage – the Civics-ship provides an additional payment (over and above any standard honorarium) to enable young people to offset any potential loss in income. The payment amount will be $150 per full day session.

Civics 101 training provided by DemocracyCo

Certificate of completion from DemocracyCo

Become part of DemocracyCo’s Deliberative Army – and get more opportunities to make a difference through your participation.
Opportunity to mentor other young people, improve our program and spread the benefits to other young people.

The Civics-ships are capped at 3 participants per deliberative process. Priority will be given to those young people with the greatest barriers to participation.

DemocracyCo will trial this approach for 5 projects over 2025/26.

DemocracyCo will promote this to potential participants on the commencement of our upcoming deliberative processes.

Interested? We'd love to talk...

If you would like to learn more about how this could support you, or young people you know please get in touch.

Contact Emma Fletcher, Co CEO

Email or call (0421 098 355).