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The Disinformation Project is New Zealand’s only independent research group providing best practice monitoring, research and consulting on disinformation and its impacts.

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Brownlee bars student journalists from parliament press gallery

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The speaker has revoked the press pass for the Aotearoa Student Press Association, leaving affected journalists baffled.

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ARE YOU READY? Register to Vote CHECK YOUR VOTER REGISTRATION STATUS FIND YOUR POLLING PLACE WHAT'S ON YOUR BALLOT? VOTE BY MAIL Election Protection Hotline Know your Voting Rights voting101 5m+people registered Knowledge is power WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW Here's what you need to know to ensure your voice is heard in every election.

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Increasing voter participation Auckland debrief Aug 2018

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Increasing voter participation Auckland debrief Aug 2018

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Why is voting important if you care about social impact?

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Why is voting important if you care about social impact?

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Could one vote - your vote - swing an entire election? Most of us abandoned this seeming fantasy not too long after we learned how elections work.

But the chances are higher than you might think. If you're in a competitive district in a competitive election, the odds that your vote will flip a national election often fall between 1 in 1 million and 1 in 10 million.

That's a very small probability, but it's big compared to your chances of winning the lottery, and it's big relative to the enormous impact governments can have on the world.

Each four years the United States federal government allocates $17,500,000,000,000, so a 1 in 10 million chance of changing the outcome of a US national election gives an average American some degree of influence over $1.75 million.

That means the expected importance of voting - the probability of changing an election's result multiplied by the impact if you do - might, depending on your personal circumstances, be very high.

This could, in itself, be a good argument for voting.

Fortunately there is a significant amount of academic research on the importance of elections and how likely one vote is to change the outcome, so I've pulled it together to estimate the average value of one vote for the right person.

The answer, as you might expect, depends a great deal on the circumstances of any given election, and indeed most votes predictably have no impact.

But there are common situations in which the expected value of casting a vote will be far higher than anything else you could hope to do in the same amount of time.

Why exactly? Let me explain.

Why is voting important? It's not just about civic duty.

In this article, we'll demonstrate that, for many people, voting is important, but not (or at least not only) because of the normal arguments about it being your civic duty.

Your vote could actually change the world for the better, and if you're in a competitive race the chances are high enough that you should think hard about hitting the voting booth.

First I'll investigate the two key things that determine the impact of your vote:

The chances of your vote changing an election's outcome in a range of different situations

How much better some candidates are for the world as a whole, compared to others

Then I'll discuss what I think are the best arguments against the importance of voting elections:

If an election is competitive, that means other people disagree about which option is better, and you're at some risk of voting for the worse candidate by mistake.

While voting itself doesn't take long, knowing enough to accurately pick which candidate is better for the world actually does take substantial effort - effort that could be better allocated elsewhere.

Finally we'll look into the impact of donating to campaigns or working to 'get out the vote', which can be effective ways to generate additional votes for your preferred candidate.

We'll use figures for United States presidential elections, because they have an unusually large impact on our priority problems, more of our readers are American citizens than any other single nationality, and more work has been done to model them than other kinds of elections. However, similar reasoning can be applied to elections in other countries.

The probability of one vote changing an election

Given how infrequently national elections are won by one vote, we can't just look at the historical record and observe the fraction for which that's true. While we do have examples of large tied elections, there'll never be enough real-life elections to accurately determine their frequency empirically.

We need a different approach: statistical modelling.

To see how the method works, we can start small. Imagine that you're on a small committee making a decision. The odds that you'll change the outcome of a vote like that - assuming 2 options and 4 other voters, each 50% likely to vote for either option - is about 19%. We could confirm that empirically if we liked.

We can then work upwards to the size of national elections: with 8 voters it's 14%, with 16 voters it's about 10%, with 32 voters about 7%, and so on. In fact, the likelihood you'll change the outcome ends up being roughly proportional to one over the square root of the number of voters.

Statisticians who specialise in politics add real polling data to the mix, and compare it to actual election results to figure out how accurately polling predicts how people will vote. This gives them a 'probability distribution' for the likelihood that each elector will choose to vote for each candidate.

With all of this information in hand, we can go ahead and model tens of billions of elections to estimate how often the entire result will be changed by a single vote.

The famous statistician Andrew Gelman of Columbia University has done just this for US presidential elections, which are broken down into states, and has published several papers outlining the results.

He found that if you're in a 'safe state' like California, the odds of your vote changing the outcome of a presidential election really is effectively zero (the model spits out 1 in 100 trillion, but it's very hard to assign meaningful probabilities to something so unlikely). Something similar would be true for voters in 'very safe seats' in the UK or Australia.

By contrast, in a small US state polling around 50/50 in a close election nationally - for instance New Mexico, Iowa, or New Hampshire in the 2000 elections - the probability could get as high as 1 in 3 million. (The article Vote for Charity's Sake offers a nice overview of this research, and we've stuck some details in this footnote.)

In a wider range of 'tipping point states' in reasonably close elections, the probability is lower, and closer to 1 in 10 million.

(Note that what matters isn't the state in which polling is closest, but rather the states that might put someone over the edge of winning the election as a whole - the 'tipping point state'. If one candidate is ahead nationally then they'll probably be ahead in the 'tipping point state' too.)

As of October 14 2020, Joe Biden's substantial lead in public opinion polls means Gelman's modelling indicates that there are only four states where the odds of one vote changing the outcome is greater than 1 in 10 million: New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

However, a perhaps unexpected finding is that even when an election doesn't look that close, the probability of one vote changing the outcome in a potential 'tipping point state' rarely falls to less than half of what it would be in a close-seeming election. This is shown visually in the figure below from FiveThirtyEight's election modelling. The underlying reason is that opinion polls are often off by a large margin, so when an election is close on election day we can't rule out that it will be a blow-out for one side - and, similarly, even when a candidate seems to be substantially ahead, we can't confidently rule out the election being close.

In the UK or Australia, an equivalent analysis would look at the likelihood that a party gains a majority in parliament by one seat, and that that seat is won by one vote.

The factors that push up the leverage of each voter are:

An election being close to 50/50 nationally

An election being close to 50/50 in a given 'tipping point' seat or voting region

Being able to accurately determine which elections are closest

Being able to accurately identify which seats or regions are closest (in which case expected influence becomes concentrated in those places)

Fewer total voters

Australia has a tenth as many voters as the US, and the UK has a fifth - which, all else equal, would make each vote 2-3x more likely to flip the outcome of a close election. Polling is similarly precise in all of these different countries. And the likely 'tipping point' seats in US, UK and Australian elections all contain a similar fraction of the population - 10 to 20% - so power is concentrated in a similarly-sized subset of voters.

So from the above we can anticipate that in a similarly tight election, in a 'tipping point seat', the odds of a vote changing the outcome would be a few times higher in those countries than in the US.

A similar analysis can be applied to any sort of election.

A common objection to this line of reasoning is that if an election is as close as one vote, it will be re-run or decided by the courts anyway, and so a single vote can never actually make a difference.

To see how this is mistaken, you need to conceptualise the vote margin in large elections as shifting the probability of each candidate winning. If you're ahead, each extra vote makes you more likely to win without a court battle or a re-run. And if you're narrowly behind, each extra vote increases your chances of successfully disputing the result. So long as we're unsure what the vote margin will be, the expected impact of each extra vote remains the same as it would be if all its impact were entirely concentrated on a perfectly tied election.

Finally, there's another quite different way one can model the impact that each vote has, but it won't much change our conclusion, so for simplicity I'll leave it in this footnote.

Alright, now that we have a sense of the likelihood of swinging an election, we need to know how valuable it would be to do so.

Governments are so large which raises the expected value of voting

Compared to the likelihood of a vote changing the outcome of an election, how much it matters who wins i) is harder to quantify, ii) depends more on your values, and iii) varies widely depending on the candidates running for office. But a quick scan of the numbers and issues at stake suggests that the impact will often be substantial.

In most rich countries, governments tax and spend 25-55% of a country's GDP. As a rule of thumb, you can roughly think of them as directing a third of a country's income.

That's enough money per person, and per vote, that positively influencing how it's spent can be important enough to offset the low chances of any given vote swinging an election.

Again using US to illustrate, over the next four years the US federal government will spend about $17.5 trillion.

Written out as a number it looks like $17,500,000,000,000. That's $53,000 for each American, or $129,000 for each vote cast in 2016.

If you multiply all that spending through a 1 in 10 million chance of changing the outcome, in a swing state like New Hampshire, it comes to $1.75 million. That's the fraction of the budget you might 'expect' to influence by voting in a swing state, in the statistical sense of expectation.

If that number sounds unexpectedly large, remember that we're shifting around roughly a third of the economy's output, over several years, and we're concentrating on the impact a voter can have if they're among the privileged 20% of the country that lives in a state which can plausibly determine the election outcome.

In the US's state-based system, 80% of eligible voters can't hope to change the outcome - but that leaves the remaining 20% with 5 times the leverage they'd have otherwise.

Of course, much of the US federal budget is quite stable, but keep in mind that stickiness in how money gets spent cuts both ways: it makes it harder to shift the budget, but if you do, it means those changes will probably stay around for longer.

It's common for parties to want to shift how several percent of GDP gets spent. But the budget doesn't even have to be that flexible for your impact to matter.

For example, if one party will spend 0.5% of GDP on foreign aid, and the other will spend 0.3%, a vote with a 1 in 10 million chance of changing the outcome would shift - in expectation - $17,800 into foreign aid.

There are other kinds of government spending that can have huge impacts as well: R&D into new clean energy technologies is probably one of the most cost-effective ways to limit climate change, and think about the enormous return the world is getting from countries like the UK that decided, years ago, to fund preliminary research into coronavirus vaccines.

But choosing which taxes to impose and how to spend the money raised is just one thing the government does, one which happens to be easy to quantify in dollar terms.

There are major non-budgetary impacts as well, which include:

Foreign policy: Elected governments decide things such as how much to trade with foreigners (which can affect their wellbeing too), how much to raise tensions with other countries in pursuit of foreign policy goals, and ultimately whether to go to war. Foreign policy is often determined without a lot of input from legislatures, which means a few elected officials have substantial discretion - and that's especially important for countries with large militaries or nuclear weapons.

Stabilising the business cycle: Governments work to raise total spending during recessions and decrease total spending when inflation is too high, in order to limit excessive ups and downs in the economy.

Regulations: Elected governments make decisions about all sorts of regulations, for instance on consumer products, workplace conditions, environmental standards, and so on.

Immigration: Elected governments decide how many foreigners can come live in a country and on what basis, ranging from skilled migrants, to economic migrants, to political refugees.

Social freedoms: Elected governments can influence whether LGBTQ+ people can be public about their sexual orientation and whether they can get married, which recreational drugs people are free to use, how police go about enforcing laws, whether voluntary euthanasia is permitted, and so on.

Political freedom: Elected governments can try to entrench themselves, or reduce the ability of the public to reflect on political questions, by harassing political opponents, being generally misleading, shutting down hostile media outlets, or making it harder for people to vote.

Measuring the social impact of the different approaches governments might take to these issues is difficult. But it could easily be more important than the shifts in spending that result from a change in government.

To illustrate, imagine that you think the chance of a nuclear war over four years under one presidential candidate is 1 in 1,000, and the chance with the other is 1 in 500. While highly uncertain, these probabilities are both figures nuclear security specialists might give if you asked them about the likelihood of nuclear war. How valuable would it be to vote for the safer leader?

To answer this, we can think about how much society would be willing to pay to avoid a nuclear war. It's really hard to estimate, but let's spitball it and say that each US resident would be willing to pay $1 million to avoid dying in a nuclear war, on average. (For comparison, the US government will spend about $7 million or so to save a life.) A total nuclear war would kill around 80% of the US population. If you do the math, then a vote with a 1 in 10 million chance of changing the election outcome would be worth $25,000 to your fellow citizens through its effects on the likelihood of a nuclear war alone. And a nuclear war would obviously also affect people overseas, as well as untold future generations.

The policies which are most impactful are not always the most salient. George W. Bush's famous choice to pursue the Iraq War resulted in the removal of Saddam Hussein, though at the cost of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives and trillions of dollars in spending. But President Bush also dramatically raised US spending on antiviral drugs for impoverished victims of HIV in Africa. This 'PEPFAR' program probably would not have been pursued in his absence, and likely prevented several million deaths.

Though the above is not a systematic survey, and some examples are atypical, to me they suggest that the outcome of elections will often have significant consequences.

Of course, not every election is that important. Sometimes all the candidates likely to win an election are similarly good overall, or if one of them is better it's hard to figure out which it is.

In particular, within some electoral systems - for instance those with compulsory voting and electoral candidates chosen by politicians or party professionals - the tendency for parties to strategically bunch together in the middle of the political spectrum is strong.

More stark differences tend to arise in places with low voter turnout, few checks on executive power, plurality voting along with more than 2 viable candidates, and party primaries in which only the most motivated voters participate. In those elections the differences between candidates tend to be larger, meaning it's more often important for the right group to win, and it's easier to tell which group that is.

What if you're wrong?

So far I've argued that voting can represent a great opportunity for social impact if:

You're in a close district in a close election

There is a noticeable difference in the desirability of different candidates winning

But there's a sophisticated argument against this view:

You can only swing an election if roughly as many people are voting for the outcome you prefer as the outcome you oppose. But if the public as a whole is roughly split down the middle, why should you trust your own judgement on the matter? Sure, you've looked into it and think that your view is right. But so have many other voters and about half of them still disagree with you. So because there's no principled reason to trust your judgement over that of others, even after doing your political research you should still think you're only about 50% likely to be voting the right way.

This is an application of the case for epistemic modesty, and it has some bite. If you think half of your fellow voters are getting things wrong, why should you think you're getting it right?

This uncertainty about whether you're truly voting the right way reduces the expected value of voting. If you had no confidence at all in your judgement - in other words, if you thought you were as likely to be wrong as you were to be right - the expected value would fall all the way to zero.

However, to go as far as that this case for intellectual modesty requires that other voters be your 'epistemic peers' - basically that they be as smart, informed, honest, and motivated as you. And there are a number of reasons you might think you can cast a ballot more wisely and altruistically than average.

First, the level of information most voters have about politics and policy is quite low. Some typical examples in the US, taken from Ilya Somin's 2013 book Democracy and Political Ignorance include:

"A survey before the 2014 election ... found that only 38 percent of Americans knew that the Republicans controlled the House of Representatives at the time, and the same number knew that the Democrats had a majority in the Senate. Not knowing which party controls these institutions makes it difficult for voters to assign credit or blame for their performance."

"For years, there has been an ongoing debate over the future of federal spending... Yet a 2014 survey found that only 20 percent of Americans realize that the federal government spends more money on Social Security than on foreign aid, transportation, and interest on the government debt. Some 33 percent believe that foreign aid is the biggest item on this list, even though it is actually the smallest, amounting to about one percent of the federal budget, compared with 17 percent for Social Security."

"In 1964, in the midst of the Cold War, only 38 percent were aware that the Soviet Union was not a member of the U.S-led NATO alliance."

This should not be surprising and in my view is no reason to think poorly of your fellow citizens. People have jobs to do, family members to take care of, and personal projects to pursue. For most folks, following the ins and outs of policy debates is neither easy nor rewarding, and because they don't live in close districts it's not the best way for them to improve the world, either. On top of that, following the news can be bad for people's focus and mental health.

While the polling above appears dismal, there is an active academic debate about how problematic it really is for voters to lack the basic knowledge they would seemingly need to vote wisely. The damage is partly reduced by uninformed voters making different random errors that cancel out, people using heuristics like 'am I better off than I was four years ago', and politicians paying attention to things voters are more likely to know (e.g. 'I want better healthcare') while ignoring their views on things they won't (e.g. how best to organise a healthcare system).

Nonetheless, for our purposes the fact remains that simply looking up basic background information - like who is in government, where different parties or people stand on the issues, what experts say about those issues when surveyed, and so on - will give you a big edge over others when it comes to determining which candidate will produce better outcomes.

If you're trying to figure out how best to treat a disease you have, it's one thing to think you can do better than your doctor, and quite another to think you can do better than a random stranger.

Secondly, if you've read this article to this point, you're likely unusually interested in figuring out which election outcome is best for the world as a whole.

But not all voters focus on that question. Some always vote for the same party as a matter of habit, without giving much thought to the expected impact on the world. Others care about which outcome is best for them and their family, or the country in which they live. Others vote to express their ideals, or their loyalty to a group, or just for fun.

If you truly aspire to vote for the outcome that is ideal for the whole world, considering everyone's wellbeing in an impartial way, you are more likely to succeed at that goal than the many other voters who aren't even trying.

Finally, even if it were individually rational to decide there's no value in trying to figure out the right way to vote because of 'epistemic modesty', the approach would foster collective laziness - leading all voters to be less informed than they otherwise would be, and likely worsening political outcomes. That would make it strange to recommend it to you all as a general policy.

Overall, while the risk of mistakenly voting for the wrong candidate reduces the value of voting, I don't think it reduces it dramatically - at least not in the most important cases, where the difference between your options is a stark one.

If you think your research can get you to be 75% confident about which candidate is better, that is half as valuable as being 100% confident you're making the right decision.

Is deciding how to vote too much effort?

While we haven't been able to place a clear dollar value on a vote in a close district in a close election, we saw that in the United States each of those votes influences more than a million dollars worth of government spending, and could have the same or greater impact in other ways.

This suggests that a vote for someone who substantially increases the value of that spending - or otherwise improves government policy - could be worth the equivalent of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to your fellow citizens.

If you divide that by the time it takes to vote - minutes in some countries, hours in others - this looks like a great opportunity to do good.

Compare it to earning money to give to the very best charity you can find: even if you assume that the organisation can turn $1 into something as valuable as giving other people in your country $100, you'd need to be able to give ~$1,000 in an hour to make it as valuable as a vote worth $100,000.

But the true cost of voting is much more than the time it takes to vote. In practice you need to do the research described above to figure out who is best to vote for. This additional effort substantially reduces the good you can do per hour.

Some people will follow politics and policy and form views about who it is best to vote for regardless. For them, figuring out how to vote is not an additional cost beyond what they are doing anyway. They may even find the process fun or energising.

But others don't like politics and wouldn't spend any time on it unless they felt it was their responsibility to do so. For them we can think of each hour spent deciding who to vote for as substituting for an hour of work or study that they could have otherwise directed towards improving the world.

How long does it take to decide how to vote? That will depend a lot on the election and how difficult it is to analyse the issues at stake. In some countries one party is clearly far more focused on the wellbeing of the world as a whole, or simply far more competent, than the other. But in other countries it's legitimately hard to tell what outcome will be best.

Hypothetically, we can imagine someone who doesn't follow politics at all between elections, and then tunes in to make a decision on who to vote for, and starts reading to try to make an informed choice. If this would require them to do the equivalent of a week's work, it would increase the effective cost of voting 10-100 fold.

If they're in a high-impact job already, working to solve a pressing global problem, it would be easy to see how it could be better for them to remain focused on the work in which they're most specialised, and leave politics to others. Depending on someone's salary, working for a week and donating the money to an effective charity could also easily be more impactful than doing research and then casting a vote.

If you're short of time, I can think of two shortcuts you could use to quickly cast a vote that's more likely to be for the right person than the wrong one.

The first is just to find someone you think is bright, shares your values, and follows politics more than you do, and ask them who to vote for.

The second is to look at opinion polling globally. Even if your country is split down the middle, the world as a whole might very strongly prefer one candidate, which is a very important piece of information from an 'epistemic modesty' perspective. Foreigners don't get to vote in other countries' elections, but they too have preferences about the outcome, are affected by the results, and their outside perspective might even give them insights that locals are missing.

Regardless, one thing to remember is that it will be easiest to tell which candidate is best to vote for in an election in which the difference is large - and these are also the elections in which a vote is of greatest value.

Another is that political participation is open to anyone who, for one reason or another, doesn't have an especially impactful job at the time.

It's hard to give general advice here, because in addition to all the variables like election closeness discussed above, individual voter's opportunity costs vary a great deal. But if I had to give a rule I would say:

If you already follow politics well enough to vote wisely (and you'd vote in a close election, etc.), it will often make sense to vote.

If you wouldn't follow politics except in order to have a social impact, and you have the opportunity to instead spend the requisite time specialising in a high-impact job working on a pressing problem, or earning to give for effective charities, or something similar, that will often be the better option.

How much does it cost to drive one extra vote?

What if you think the outcome of an election is important enough that you want to do more than just vote yourself?

For most of us, the low hanging fruit is to contact friends and family in competitive districts, encourage them to vote, and make the case for our preferred candidate. Unsurprisingly research shows that personal appeals from friends and family have a big impact, and have 10 times or more than the effect of an appeal from a stranger.

But having exhausted your friends, you might decide you want to give money to a campaign as well. How much do you have to give to get your candidate one extra vote?

With billions of dollars spent on political advocacy in the US each year, this has been the focus of substantial research. Campaigns can randomly target 'get out the vote' efforts on some voters and not others, and then see how much more likely those voters are to show up.

This table from the 2015 edition of Get Out The Vote summarises the results of those sort of experiments, with the cost per vote in the final column:

According to these studies, for those methods shown to work - such as door-knocking or phone-banking - persuading one stranger to vote for your preferred candidate costs $30-100, or a few hours of work as a volunteer.

If, having compared the candidates and the closeness of the election, you think a vote for the right person is in some sense worth thousands of dollars, that sounds pretty good. However, it has to be compared to the best alternative ways to use your money to improve the world, which may also offer a huge return on investment.

On top of that I've been advised by researchers I trust, who have investigated the topic in detail, that these figures are underestimates, at least for the big elections you're most likely to follow.

That's for multiple reasons. One is that all results in social science tend to look weaker over time as they're scrutinised and people attempt to replicate them.

Another is that political campaigns, at least in the US, have more money for each voter they're chasing than they did in the past. New technologies also make them better at targeting the voters most likely to be convinced. As a result, swing voters in swing states are already contacted with campaign messages again and again, reducing the impact of any further prompts.

For instance, a 2020 paper looking at TV ads in recent US presidential elections suggested a cost per vote of $100-1,000, which is probably now more typical.

However, not all campaigns are as well resourced, and the less funding they have the cheaper it's likely to be for them to find additional supporters.

The campaigns for Joe Biden and Donald Trump, along with allied groups, are likely to have about $30 per voter in potential tipping point states. Both have set new fundraising records for presidential campaigns.

But the Biden campaign had just a tenth as much - $3 per voter - in the 2020 Democratic primaries through Super Tuesday (after which the primaries began to wind down).

That difference is even starker when you consider that a much larger fraction of voters are open to switching their support in primary elections than in general elections (though keep in mind the differences between candidates within a party are less than the differences between parties).

This level of funding in general elections is somewhat unique to the US. Different campaign finance arrangements mean that parties in the UK and Australia both have closer to $10 per voter in a marginal seat.

In these circumstances the experiments suggesting a cost of $40-100 per vote could even be overestimates, but I haven't yet investigated the research on the impact of campaign spending outside the US.

The question of when political campaigns are the best use of someone's charitable giving is also beyond the scope of this article, and seems likely to hinge on how well funded the campaigns are and how large the difference is between candidates.

But if you can encourage someone to vote for <$100, while you think the social value of an extra vote is >$10,000, then it should be possible to make a case that it's competitive with other options. That is something I hope to investigate in more detail in future.

And if voting yourself is worthwhile, contacting friends and family to encourage them to do the same will also usually be above the bar.

Overall, what is the altruistic importance of voting?

The answer is clearly yes, under the following conditions:

1. The election concerns important issues, such as the allocation of large amounts of money, or the foreign policy of a country with a large military

2. One candidate is substantially better than the other, and you're in a position to know which one that is

3. The election is somewhat competitive, and you're able to vote in a competitive seat, or district, or state

In a situation like that, the hour you spend voting is likely to be the most impactful one in your entire year, and could on average get you some influence over how hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars are spent. For this reason I vote whenever I get the chance.

When they vote, some of my friends feel very nervous about whether they're voting for the right person. While there's a lot they don't know, surveys how much the public knows about policy issues suggest that they're a lot more informed than the average voter, and so their input should increase the odds of the better candidate winning. We shouldn't make the perfect the enemy of the good.

All of that said, I respect people who consciously opt out of following politics, in order to preserve their focus on other important work that improves the world. Following politics and developing informed views can absorb a great deal of time. While spending one hour voting is highly impactful, spending hundreds of hours tracking politics in between elections isn't - at least if you aren't regularly taking action based on what you're learning.

Finally, while persuading other people to vote takes more time or money than simply voting yourself, in elections where you're confident one candidate is much better for the world than another, joining or donating to a political campaign may also represent a high-impact way of improving the world.
Has this article helped you better estimate how important it is to vote? As we noted above, appeals from people they know are much more likely to influence people's behaviour than TV ads or impersonal mail. Some experiments suggest a personal appeal from a friend could increase someone's likelihood of voting by as much as 10 percentage points. So consider sharing this article with your friends.

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Why is voting important if you care about social impact?

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Could one vote - your vote - swing an entire election? Most of us abandoned this seeming fantasy not too long after we learned how elections work. But the chances are higher than you might think.

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Data & Charts - Pacific People's Wellbeing

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Data & Charts - Pacific People's Wellbeing

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Pacific Peoples Wellbeing 2023 Report - The Treasury

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Guide to Social Impact and Social Leadership

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Guide to Social Impact and Social Leadership

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Social differentiation in young people's political participation: the impact of social and educational factors on youth political engagement in Britain

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Social differentiation in young people's political participation: the impact of social and educational factors on youth political engagement in Britain

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Youth Engagement in Singapore: The Interplay of Social and Traditional Media

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Youth Engagement in Singapore: The Interplay of Social and Traditional Media

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Positive Youth Development - Weaving Connections

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Positive Youth Development - Weaving Connections

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If youth voice is encouraged in Positive Youth Development, why aren't young people voting? How can you involve technology in Civic Engagement that it has grass-roots relevance but is also informal without giving young people a head ache.

Consider only focusing on 'being informed' and 'participation'. Not policy development process.

Note: The Hive is about involving young people in the policy development process

Note: Make it 16 - is advocating for the voting age to be dropped to 16

What is an example of youth civic engagement?

Examples of civic participation include: voting, becoming educated about your country, being informed about local and national news, joining or supporting a political party, volunteering, taking part in a public demonstration, movement building and more.

What is the difference between civic engagement and civic participation? Is it the same?

What's the pipeline?
How do you build trust with young people and civic participation?
Positive Youth Participation is the backdrop and baseline

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Issuu is a digital publishing platform that makes it simple to publish magazines, catalogs, newspapers, books, and more online. Easily share your publications and get them in front of Issuu's millions of monthly readers. Title: World_Youth_Report_Civic_Engagement, Author: UNDESA - DSPD, Name: World_Youth_Report_Civic_Engagement, Length: 165 pages, Page: 1, Published: 2016-07-13

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Civic engagement involves "working to make a difference in the civic life of one's community and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political processes." Civic engagement includes both paid and unpaid forms of political activism, environmentalism, and community and national service. Volunteering, national service, and service-learning are all forms of civic engagement.

According to the 2006 National Civic and Political Health Survey, seven percent of 15- to 25-year-old Americans participated in 10 or more community engagement or political activities within the previous year. When compared to their peers who report no civic engagement activities, this group was more likely to be African-American, urban, attend church regularly, from a family with parents who volunteer, a current student (in college or high school), and from college-educated home.

AmeriCorps (formerly the Corporation for National and Community Service, or CNCS) is a federal agency that sends people power and funding to communities across the country for causes such as disaster response, opioid crisis, and education.

Participation in civic engagement activities can help youth become better informed about current events. For example, according to the 2006 National Civic and Political Health Survey, approximately a quarter of youth who had not participated in civic engagement activities within the last year did not answer any questions regarding current politics correctly.

Definition and Constructs

Youth civic engagement is defined as working to make a difference in the civic life of one's community. It also involves developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values, and motivation to make that difference. These activities enrich the lives of youths and are socially beneficial to the community. Four interrelated constructs have been identified in the research literature as necessary for civic engagement (see Figure 1).
FIGURE 1: FOUR CONSTRUCTS OF CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
Volunteering is only one form of civic engagement included, as defined above, in the construct of civic action and civic commitment or duty, but research has also shown a connection between youth who volunteer and other forms of youth civic engagement. Findings suggest that "among youth, volunteering plays a valuable role in shaping how youth learn to interact with their community and develop the skills, values, and sense of empowerment necessary to become active citizens."

While many youth volunteer, most young people do not see a connection between volunteering and political engagement or activism. In the 2006 National Civic and Political Health Survey, the majority of young people said that they volunteered in order to help others, not to address a social or political problem. Only six percent of youth believed that their volunteering was a means to address social or political problems.

Another possible form of civic action and civic commitment and duty is service-learning. According to the American Psychological Association, service-learning and civic engagement can be related but are not the same thing. Service-learning does not have to include a civic dimension and all forms of civic engagement are not service-learning. Civic engagement is a broader concept that may encompass, but is not limited to, service-learning. Service-learning differs from community service or volunteerism in two distinct ways:

The service activity is integrated with academic curriculum and content.

Students engage in reflection activities after their service experience and apply their learning in real-life activities.

Resources

Character and Civic Education
The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools ' Character and Civic Education group administers various programs in character and civics education. These programs include providing financial assistance for character and citizenship education activities in elementary and secondary schools and institutions of higher education, and reporting on issues and programs, disseminating information, and providing technical assistance to state agencies and state and local correctional institutions.

AmeriCorps (Formerly the Corporation for National and Community Service, CNCS)
AmeriCorps was created (as CNCS) as an independent agency of the United States government by the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993. AmeriCorps brings people together to tackle the country's most pressing challenges, through national service and volunteering.

Helping Your Child Become a Responsible Citizen (PDF, 43 Pages)
This resource from the U.S. Department of Education provides information about the values and skills that contribute to character and good citizenship, including guidance on what parents can do to help their elementary-, middle-, and high school-aged children develop strong character.

How to Plan and Implement an Anti-Racist Service Project
The YSA Knowledge Center, under a grant from the Serve.gov, provides downloadable resources and video trainings to take service projects from idea to action through the project planning steps of investigation, preparation and planning, action, reflection, and demonstration/celebration.

References

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Civic engagement involves "working to make a difference in the civic life of one's community and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political processes."

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Lifehack - Investigating youth civic enagement in Aotearoa New Zealand

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Lifehack - Investigating youth civic enagement in Aotearoa New Zealand

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Futures thinking is also known as foresight, strategic foresight and futures studies.

On this page:

About futures thinking

Futures thinking provides a range of techniques to help you think about the drivers of change that are shaping the future and explore the implications of these for making decisions today - not only about what to do, but how and when to do it.

Futures thinking does not attempt to predict the future, nor does it purport that there is only one correct future or that the future is pre-determined. There are a range of possible futures and the future can be actively shaped by the decisions we take today.

Futures thinking is a creative and exploratory process that uses divergent thinking, seeking many possible answers and acknowledging uncertainty. It's a different mind-set to analytical thinking which uses convergent thinking to seek the right answer and reduce uncertainty.

Futures thinking is a discipline in its own right. It's used in strategy development and in design and planning, as well as to inform policy development.

Futures thinking and the policy process

The insights from futures thinking can be used as an input into the policy process. Futures thinking is most powerful when combined with other inputs (e.g. data and evidence, design thinking, and evaluative thinking) to inform policy analysis and advice. Sometimes futures thinking will produce specific policy recommendations. Other times the insights will mean the policy team is in a better position to design the policy recommendations with consideration for the long-term, or with more knowledge of potential impacts.

Futures thinking can be used at different stages of policy development. Most commonly it's used when conducting policy stewardship to help identify the strategic priorities for the policy agenda. When working on an individual policy, it's commonly used to understand and frame an issue at the beginning of the process, and later on to identify and test different policy options against the range of possible futures.

Futures work is highly flexible with different ways to apply futures thinking in the policy process including:

using the outputs of a futures exercise conducted by someone else (e.g. scenarios exploring possible futures) and applying it to your policy.

applying some of the futures thinking tools and techniques to your policy.

conducting an in-depth futures exercise. This will require the support of someone with expertise in futures thinking to help design and conduct the exercise.

Why you should use it

Futures thinking helps you to make better policy through understanding the long-term issues or challenges shaping the future development of a policy area. By using futures thinking as part of your policy process it helps you to:

identify and test the assumptions (individual, team, agency, and system) that are influencing how the policy issue is being considered and allows you to update those assumptions as the world changes.

explore beyond the assumed future to consider a much wider range of possible contexts in which your policy may be operating.

generate new insights into possible future developments so you can take account of them in the way you frame your policy.

think through future intended and unintended consequences of your policy in different contexts.

reduce risk by developing policy that is more resilient to changing conditions and takes advantage of new opportunities.

What it involves

Futures thinking involves:

looking for signs of change that may shape the range of possible futures. This includes change that is considered highly likely, as well as events considered highly unlikely but that would have great impact and events that are unexpected.

using diverse data sources such as quantitative trends (e.g. populations), qualitative trends (e.g social values), online literature reviews (e.g. news articles and blogs) and stakeholder insights.

engaging with diverse stakeholders. A diverse group of people can contribute their varied experiences to create more robust views about the future and its implications for your policy.

applying a systems lens to consider not only the factors immediately relevant to your policy, but also linking to the greater macro factors that may shape the international, domestic and organisational context in the coming years.

What you'll get out of it

Innovative proposals that challenge existing assumptions and are informed by a range of information sources and ideas not typically explored.

Policy that is aligned with a range of possible futures to take advantage of opportunities, mitigate risks and reduce unintended consequences.

Policy that helps shape the future to promote your desired outcomes and prevent undesirable events.

If you use futures approaches that involve high levels of stakeholder engagement, these can build collective support for a desired policy outcome and align stakeholder actions to achieving that outcome - increasing the chances of success of your policy.

Ideal circumstances for use

You are working on complex issues with high levels of ambiguity and uncertain outcomes. This may be because you have incomplete information or data to guide you, or the issue sits within a complex and changing system.

Issues where future interests are at risk of being overtaken by bias towards the present. This includes creeping problems that develop gradually and sometimes imperceptibly over time which means they can attract little attention, or issues where the benefits of intervention accrue much later than the costs.

You are conducting policy stewardship and providing strategic advice on medium to longer term issues facing New Zealand.

You have active sponsors and champions willing to challenge deeply held assumptions and mental models that may influence how people think about your policy area.

Limitations

There is potential for futures work to create tensions if factors are identified that under current settings are not being addressed. If conducting an in-depth futures exercise in a controversial area, seek appropriate authorisation before proceeding.

There can be a great deal of overlap in futures work in terms of the broad themes. Drivers of change are generally multi-disciplinary and cross-sectoral which means they are likely to have been covered in some way before. Be careful not to reinvent the wheel and instead build on available results and previous knowledge.

In areas where there is relative certainty about the direction, nature and speed of change, futures thinking may be of limited value. Futures tools and techniques have been developed to test assumptions and broaden the scope of thinking in relation to critical uncertainties.

The insights generated in futures work may not be well received if there isn't a willingness to reconsider assumptions and mental models. You're more likely to be successful if you conduct targeted futures exercises with decision-makers in order to open their minds to new possibilities.

There is a learning curve to doing futures work. It will take time to become familiar with the different futures tools and techniques, as well as the more creative and exploratory way of thinking.

Tools or concepts

A range of different tools and techniques have been developed to support futures thinking. There are more than 30 tools and techniques in use in the futures sector.

Commonly used futures tools

Some of the commonly used futures tools include:

Other futures tools

Some of the other futures tools include:

7 Questions (pages 29-32) - interview technique for gathering strategic insights from stakeholders on the drivers of change using a series of strategic questions.

Delphi Study (pages 35-40) - a consultation process used to gather opinions about the future from a wide group of subject experts and to prioritise strategic issues.

Cross Impact Matrix (also known as cross impact analysis) - illuminates the interactions among a set of forces, trends or decisions.

Causal Layered Analysis - identifies the views underpinning diverse perspectives about the future by identifying the four levels of causality (visible, causes, worldview, and metaphors or myths).

Axes of Uncertainty (pages 46-49) - defines the change drivers that are more important for the policy area but which have an uncertain outcome.

3 Horizons - applies three horizons simultaneously such as current state, transition state and future state, to connect the present with the desired future and identify the disruptions which might occur in moving towards the desired future.

Visioning (pages 57-60) - creates a set of common aims and objectives for a project and describes what the future will be like (the vision) if they are delivered.

Roadmapping (pages 73-76) - shows how a range of inputs such as research, trends or policy interventions, will combine over time to shape the future development of the policy area.

References and guides

The Futures Toolkit - Provides tools for futures thinking for policy professionals in government, produced by the UK Government Office for Science. Includes notes on the level of experience and facilitation skill required for each of the futures tools covered.

Foresight Training Modules - Provides materials to better understand foresight and incorporate it into the policy process, produced by Policy Horizons Canada. Their foresight method involves seven steps: framing, assumptions, scanning, systems mapping, change drivers, scenarios, and results.

Strategic Foresight - Discusses six different strategic foresight methods, often used when there is no or little quantitative information available, and how they align with the policy process. Produced by Kate Delaney for the Australian Government's Department of Agriculture and Water Resources.

ForLearn Guide - Provides materials on why foresight is necessary and how it is done, produced by the European Commission. Designed for more experienced practitioners conducting in-depth futures exercises.

Futures Tools workshop - Summary of two-day training workshop on Futures Tools hosted by the NZ Ministry of Transport. Provides hints and tips for each of the futures tools covered.

Additional resources

Futures Thinking Mythbusters - Flips the myths about futures thinking to better understand what it is and what it's not.

A brief guide to futures thinking and foresight - Tips, advice and guidance to help policymakers embed long-term thinking and external insight into policy making. Produced by the UK Government Office for Science.

Initiating a futures exercise: from light touch (pages 6-7 in The Futures Toolkit) to more in-depth exercises in How to do Foresight which provides information on how to scope, scale and devise the methodology for a futures exercise.

Protecting the interests of future generations, and foresight - Summary of presentations on the Welsh approach to protecting the interests of future generations, and case studies from the NZ public service on the use of foresight.

Foresight for Governance in Singapore - Presentation by Aaron Maniam on how foresight is used in the government in Singapore, and video below of him sharing lessons learned.

Case studies

Visions of Wellbeing for Aotearoa New Zealand 2050-2070

Visions of Wellbeing for Aotearoa New Zealand 2050-2070 is a summary of two workshops facilitated by the UNESCO Chair in Futures Studies, Professor Sohail Inayatullah, with input from the Chief Science Advisors and some government officials. The workshops were hosted by the Infrastructure Commission and the Ministry of Transport. They were designed to test and apply horizon scanning, future scenarios and backcasting to explore alternative futures for Aotearoa New Zealand. This report does not represent government policy, advice, or the views of any government agencies mentioned in this document.

Futures thinking video series

This five-part video series explores how futures thinking has been applied in the policy process. It begins by explaining what futures thinking is and how you can apply it to support policy development. The video then presents four case studies from the New Zealand government on how different futures thinking techniques have been applied and some tips for those wanting to use futures thinking.

You can watch the full video which includes the introduction and four case studies, or watch each segment individually.

Full video

This includes the introduction and the four case studies.

Introduction

Strategist and futurist Cathy Swanson introduces futures thinking and how it can be used in the policy process.

Case study: Developing scenarios

The Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment discusses developing future scenarios on the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Case study: Seven questions technique

Te Kawa Mataaho talks about applying the seven questions technique to inform a project on strategic workforce thinking in the New Zealand public service.

Case study: Delphi technique

The Ministry of Transport describes applying the Delphi technique on how to transition road freight in New Zealand to alternative green fuels.

Case study: Applying scenarios

Inland Revenue shares their experience of applying future scenarios to consider what changes may be needed to the settings for tax and social policy.

Communities of Practice

A forum for the public sector to practice foresighting, build capability and apply futures as a discipline into public sector activities.
Strategic Futures Group
Email Cathy.Swanson@ird.govt.nz to be included in the Strategic Futures Group emails and events.

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Futures thinking is also known as foresight, strategic foresight and futures studies. On this page: Futures thinking provides a range of techniques to help you think about the drivers of change that are shaping the future and explore the implications of these for making decisions today - not only about what to do, but how and when to do it.

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https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/nz/Documents/State%20of%20the%20state/Deloitte-NZ-SotS-2019-Article-3.pdf

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State of the State 2019: Civic engagement | Deloitte New Zealand

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Despite New Zealand scoring top marks on political participation, those impacted by inequities in our society are less likely to engage in things like voting and consultation.

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Subnational ethnic population projections: 2018(base)-2043 | Stats NZ

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The low, medium, and high growth projections indicate that the population growth rate for all four ethnic groups will slow in all areas between 2018 and 2043.

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Goals of the I Am Auckland plan

This plan has seven goals:

Voice: Children and young people have a voice, are valued, and contribute.

Belonging: Children and young people are important, belong, are cared about, and feel safe.

Health and well-being: Children and young people are happy, healthy and thriving.

Fair go: Children and young people are given equal opportunities to succeed and have a fair go.

Connected: Children and young people can get around Auckland and get connected.

Opportunity: Children and young people feel that Auckland is their playground.

Whakapuawai: Rangatahi tū rangatira (all rangatahi will thrive).

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I Am Auckland - the Children and Young People's Strategic Action Plan

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This plan has seven goals: Voice: Children and young people have a voice, are valued, and contribute. Belonging: Children and young people are important, belong, are cared about, and feel safe. Health and well-being: Children and young people are happy, healthy and thriving.

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160425 Cttee for Akl governance_no notes

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1. Consulting Young People About Their Ideas and Opinions

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Decision Making - Its Not What You Think

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Tāmaki Makaurau Moananui-ā-Kiwa

Who are Pacific people?

'Pacific people' is a term used to describe a dynamic and diverse group of people living in New Zealand who migrated from the Pacific islands or who identify with the Pacific islands because of ancestry or heritage.

These island countries and territories have distinct populations with diverse political structures, history, socio-economic status, language and culture.

Even within each island group there is great variation in terms of:

demographic characteristics

migratory experiences

socio-cultural belief systems and practices (Auckland Council, 2015).

The 2018 Census recorded a total of 381,642 people from over thirty distinct Pacific groups living in New Zealand. The majority ( 243,966 people or 64 per cent) lived in Auckland. This is 85,701 more people than was recorded in 2013.

Pacific people in Auckland and New Zealand are a rapidly growing and changing population. From a small immigrant community, the Pacific population has grown, through migration and natural increase, into a population of considerable size and social significance.

Note: Auckland and New Zealand Pacific populations from 2018 Census and Pacific islands populations accessed (03/02/2020). For more information see Worldometers website .

Pacific migration to Auckland

People of Pacific ethnicities have a long history of settlement in New Zealand, with migration from various parts of the Pacific throughout the last 150 years.

Close family linkages, employment opportunities and population pressure on some islands led many Pacific people to migrate here.

Many also migrated out of necessity and duty to families at home, whom they either supported with remittances or funded to join them in New Zealand.

Pacific people, like many immigrants, faced the challenges of adapting to and establishing themselves in a new country, a new language and a new social and economic environment.

The first Pacific groups to settle in Auckland were mainly from Polynesian islands that have strong historical links with New Zealand, such as Samoa, Tonga, Cook Islands and Niue.

More recently there has been an increasing tendency for people from Micronesia and Melanesia to migrate to Auckland for work and study.

Some island countries now have more people living in Auckland and New Zealand than in the island countries themselves.

Number and proportion of Pacific people in Auckland and New Zealand, 1961 to 2018 (census), 2038 (projections)

Data source: Stats NZ censuses (1961-2018), ethnic population projections (2017)

Note: The 1961, 1971 and 1981 censuses identified Polynesians, Fijians, Melanesians and Micronesians separately. These groups are combined in the graph to make up Pacific people. The Auckland area may also differ in the earlier Census.

Waves of immigration from the Pacific islands

There have been two significant waves of migration from the Pacific islands to Auckland.

The first was in the 1960s in response to the demand for labour (Ongley, 1991; Dunsford et al., 2011). Young men predominantly came here as agricultural and forestry workers, and young women as domestic workers.

In addition there were also push factors such as the tropical cyclones which damaged Tokelau and Niue in the 1960s.

The second wave of migration met the acute labour shortage in the manufacturing industry in the early 1970s (Fraenkel, 2012).

However, the oil crisis and economic recession of the 1970s resulted in the loss of many manufacturing jobs and Pacific people who had overstayed the time allowed by their visas were targeted for removal from New Zealand.

The first Pacific Auckland

Most early Pacific migrants to New Zealand settled in Auckland, where the job opportunities were and where Pacific communities were starting to form.

Auckland's first Pacific community was in the inner city suburbs of Ponsonby, Newton and Grey Lynn, as well as Freemans Bay and Parnell.

By 2013, Pacific people had settled throughout Auckland with high concentrations particularly in the south and in some areas in west and central Auckland.

The largest Pacific populations at the 2018 Census lived in the local board areas of Māngere-Ōtāhuhu (46,578 persons) followed by Ōtara-Papatoetoe (39,198 people) and Manurewa (34,707 persons).

Pacific populations across Auckland, 1971 and 2013

​Data source: Stats NZ, Census

Today's Pacific Auckland

Today's Pacific Auckland population is mostly New Zealand-born, predominantly young, and highly urbanised. Pacific people are now the third largest ethnic group, making up 16 per cent of the Auckland population in 2018.

Migration from the Pacific now contributes less to the growth of the Pacific population in New Zealand than growth through natural increase (Tanielu & Johnson, 2014).

Although many Pacific people still have strong and proud connections to the islands, for many others New Zealand is where they were born and what they call home.

The Pacific population is youthful and younger than all of the other main ethnic groups, with a median age of 24 years. In 2018, about one in four children in Auckland (24 per cent) had at least one Pacific ethnic identity.

The younger age structure of the Pacific population provides momentum for future growth. Other components of population change such as death rates, migration patterns and changes in ethnic identity will play a smaller role in population changes.

Auckland's Pacific population is predominantly made up of people who identify as Samoan (one in two), Tongan (one in four), Cook Island Māori (two in ten) and Niuean (one in ten).

These groups are not necessarily exclusive, as people may have identified with more than one ethnicity. At the 2018 Census, 72 per cent of Auckland's Pacific people identified as Pacific only.

Socio-economic issues

Pacific people are over represented among the unemployed, lower-skilled workers and low-income earners.

In 2018, the reported personal incomes of Pacific peoples in Auckland were generally lower than for the rest of Auckland ($24,100 median personal income compared with $34,400 for Auckland).

Pacific peoples were also more likely to rent than to own their own home. In 2018, 81 per cent did not own their usual place of residence.

Some improvement has been recorded in some of these indicators in recent years. Further improvements in education and skill levels will be required if disparities in employment, income and living standards are to be reduced. For more information, see Outcome: Opportunity and Prosperity .

Socio-economic indicators for Pacific people aged 15 years and over in Auckland, 2006 to 2013 (Census) and 2014 to 2015 (Household Labour Force Survey)

Conclusion

The Pacific population within Auckland is anticipated to continue to grow through migration and natural increase, and to blend with the wider New Zealand population.

This will result in shifts and changes to traditional ethnic and cultural identity among Pacific groups.

Medium ethnic projections by Stats NZ indicate that people of Pacific ethnicities could make up 18 per cent of the Auckland population by 2043.

The future impact of climate change on Pacific nations is not fully known. Depending on the severity of these impacts, and how New Zealand approaches this issue, migration may exceed current projections.

Pacific people play an important role in the social and economic landscape of Auckland and will continue to do so.

References

Auckland Council (2015). Exploring Pacific economies: wealth practices and debt management (PDF 408KB) . Auckland Council working report, WR2015/002.

Dunsford, D., Park, JK., Littleton, J., Friesen, W., Herda, P., Neuwelt, P., Hand, J., Blackmore, P., Malua, S., Grant, J., Kearns, R., Bryder, L. and Underhill-Sem, Y. (2011). Better lives: the struggle for health of transnational Pacific peoples in New Zealand, 1950-2000. Research in Anthropology and Linguistics, 9. University of Auckland. Auckland.

Fraenkel, J. (2012). Pacific Islands and New Zealand - Immigration and aid.Te Ara - the Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, updated 13 July 2012. Available at https://teara.govt.nz/en/pacific-islands-and-new-zealand.

Ongley, P. (1991). Pacific Islands' migration and the New Zealand labour market in P. Spoonley, D. Pearson and C. Macpherson (eds.) Nga take: ethnic relations and racism in Aotearoa/New Zealand, pp.17-36, Dunmore Press, Palmerston North.

Stats NZ and Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs (2010). Demographics of New Zealand's Pacific population.

Tanielu, R., and Johnson, A. (2014). This is home. An update on the state of Pasifika people in New Zealand (PDF 1.30MB) . The Salvation Army Social Policy and Parliamentary Unit, Auckland. May 2014.

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Tāmaki Makaurau Moananui-ā-Kiwa 'Pacific people' is a term used to describe a dynamic and diverse group of people living in New Zealand who migrated from the Pacific islands or who identify with the Pacific islands because of ancestry or heritage. These island countries and territories have distinct populations with diverse political structures, history, socio-economic status, language and culture.

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Problem statement: Pacific young people have low voting rates

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Problem statement: Pacific young people have low voting rates

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Questions

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Do Good, Feel Good: a movement for Pasifika wellbeing | Adult and Community Education

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It was started in South Auckland in 2015 by The Cause Collective (formerly known as the Alliance Community Initiatives Trust - ACIT) to connect young Pasifika people to health services. Since then Do Good Feel Good has developed into a movement for Pasifika wellbeing and it is in the process of expa…

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22 Feb 2023: The Art of asking questions

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22 Feb 2023: The Art of asking questions

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I like
I like that today's session was very much about 'learning by doing' which is my way of learning by just giving it a go with clear instructions.

I wish
I wish I knew this formula earlier in my profession as we ask questions a lot in my line of work. I wish though that it didn't take so long to complete the task but it's part of the process

I wonder
I wonder if 20 mins is enough to write all your questions. I also wonder if you always need an image to kick start your questions? I am keen on the 'problem statements' and defining this for me

What's next?
Apply the formula to prompt my questions. See next padlet

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REFLECTIONS ON WHY I AM CONSIDERING THE PROJECT IDEA (to be completed)

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REFLECTIONS ON WHY I AM CONSIDERING THE PROJECT IDEA (to be completed)

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I Like: What do you like about the project idea that you are considering? What makes it appealing to you to have this as your focus for your Masters?

I am passionate about youth participation, youth voice and social innovation

The question that I have is 'If youth voice is encouraged in Youth Development, why are young people voting in Local and Central Elections?

I Wish: What do you wish you knew more about in relation to the topic you are considering? The Question Formulation Technique might be helpful for teasing about more things you wish you knew or wonder

I Wonder: What do you wonder about in regards to the topic? Is there anything that you are thinking about that might impact on whether the project is worth pursuing or not?

What's Next? What is one action that you could take to progress your project idea development further? What would you need to do to further develop your idea?

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Wow! It was an incredible first day of orientation. I have been a little anxious in preparation for the MCOR programme. Never in my wildest dreams I would ever be starting a Master's paper. Thanks to the team at academyEX, they've created an awesome programme that is so attractive, I couldn't say no. This will be considered my first entry to capture my thoughts. The set up is as follows:

I like: What aspects of todays meeting stood out to you and why?

I wish: If there is an aspect of todays meeting that you would change, what would it be?

I wonder: Did something come up for you during today's meeting that piqued your interest enough to explore?

What is next: What is ONE action you plan to take with the information you've learned?

LASSSSS-GOOOOOOO!