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Learning through Collaboration

This chapter chronicles the story and results of a rich collaboration between several NGO and research partners (Ibase, Pólis, Canadian Policy Research Networks and IDRC) that spanned design, implementation, analysis and reporting of an innovative and ambitious project: the Brazilian youth and democracy dialogue. Motivated by a shared commitment to strengthen democracies through the meaningful engagement of young people, the partners contributed their knowledge, experiences and passion to produce a credible process and product. Recounting the key milestones and elements of this collaboration, the authors explore the challenges addressed, identify factors that contributed to the project’s success, share learnings and reflect on what is needed to advance the theory and practice of public dialogue (with particular reference to young people)

^* About the authors:

Mary Pat MacKinnon and Suzanne Taschereau are project advisors to the Brazilian youth and democracy dialogue initiative.

in Canada and Brazil. The chapter concludes by identifying particular themes that require focused attention to help improve and sharpen methods, results and impacts of deliberative dialogue.

‘… dialogue is a kind of necessary posture to the extent that humans have become more and more critically communicative beings. Dialogue is a moment where humans meet to reflect on their reality as they make and remake it.’
Paulo Freire¹

‘Some may think that to affirm dialogue – the encounter of men and women in the world in order to transform the world – is naively and subjectively idealistic. There is nothing, however, more real or concrete than people in the world, than humans with other humans.’
Paulo Freire²

Introduction

Over the last several years, a group of Brazilian and Canadian researchers have constructed a solid bridge across North and South America to share and enlarge collective understanding and knowledge about why and how to engage young people in their respective democracies. Reflecting the authors’ perspectives as Canadian researchers and practitioners, this article tells the story of this international partnership. It recounts key milestones and elements of the collaboration, explores the challenges encountered, shares learnings and reflects on what is needed to advance cross cultural research relationships. It also identifies areas warranting closer scrutiny, including improving deliberative dialogue methods and assessing the results and impacts of deliberative dialogue practice and research, with a particular focus on engaging young people in democracy.

Context, impetus and milestones

The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) – a Canadian publicly funded arms-length research organization – provided the inspiration for the creation of this international project. Without IDRC’s financial support, intellectual curiosity and active involvement, this partnership would not have materialized. The partners in this endeavour were IDRC, Instituto Brasileiro de Análises Sociais e Economicas (Ibase), Instituto de Estudos de Formacão e Assessoria em Politicas Sociais (Pólis) and Canadian Policy Research Networks (CPRN).

IDRC was one of several funders of a national citizens’ dialogue on Canada’s future³ undertaken by CPRN (2002-03) in partnership with Viewpoint Learning Inc. Intrigued by the methodology and results, IDRC, led by Federico Burone (IDRC Director for Latin America and Caribbean Region), saw the potential for its adaptation to South America and Brazil in particular where the newly elected Labour government led by President Lula had flagged youth disengagement as a societal challenge demanding attention. Burone organized a workshop in Brasilia in early October 2003 (Citizens’ Dialogue: Opportunities, Methodology and Lessons Learned) at which CPRN’s Director of Public Involvement, Mary Pat MacKinnon, presented the results of and lessons from CPRN’s dialogue on Canada’s future. Other presenters included the heads of Ibase and Pólis (Candido Gryzbowski and Silvio Caccia Bava), Cezar Alvarez (representing President Lula’s newly elected office), as well as other government officials and academics from Latin America.

Subsequent meetings and discussions with the President’s office involving Ibase, Pólis, IDRC and CPRN led to the launch (halfway through 2004) of an ambitious and innovative research dialogue project called Brazilian Youth and Democracy: participation, spheres and public policies. The selection of youth and democracy as the dialogue theme reflected a collective growing disquietude shared by civil society and government about the disconnection between youth and democratic participation and the failure of democratic institutions to adapt democratic practices to better engage youth. The dialogue project had two key action-oriented policy objectives:

1. to provide evidence on how young people from metropolitan areas in Brazil assess the current need and opportunities for their social integration and what they expect for the future of the country with regard to poverty, basic social services, labour markets, market niches and expectations for their lives; and
   
   
2. to facilitate the use of research-based outcomes in local, provincial and national discussions to influence on-going youth public policy design and implementation processes.

Concurrent with the development of the Brazil project, CPRN was embarking on its own investigation motivated by a similar concern about youth participation in democracy -by midway through 2004 this had become an important research theme for the organization.⁴ Shortly after, CPRN had launched its own initiative: the National Dialogue and Summit on Engaging Young Canadians. CPRN’s youth dialogue project had several objectives:

• to understand how young people define active citizenship;
  
  
• to learn about what would motivate young people to become more engaged in public life;
  
  
• to identify what needs to change within public, community and private institutions to encourage more active citizenship; and
  
  
• to learn about young people’s hopes and expectations for themselves and for others and the values that underpin their vision for Canada.

Thus, when IDRC approached CPRN to provide its partner, Ibase and Pólis with training, technical assistance and support⁵ during the preparation, implementation and reporting phases, we were quick to sign on. This alignment of interest, timing and resources proved to be very productive for the Canadian and Brazilian collaboration.

Before sketching key milestones that describe the collaboration’s evolution, a note on the philosophy and approach that shaped the relationships among the Brazil project team, IDRC and CPRN may be helpful. CPRN approached and participated in this project guided by the belief that it had at least as much, if not more, to learn as to contribute. Rather than seeing the partnership as one of simply transferring methodology from Canada to Brazil, team members envisioned working together to define what was needed. The relationship was entered into with all parties aware of the complexity of the initiative, understanding that cross cultural collaboration required respect and openness, and recognizing that it would certainly demand flexibility and acceptance of uncertainties and unpredictable outcomes.

Table 1: Collaboration Milestones

August – September 2004: Initial Exchanges regarding methodology and adaptations to Brazilian context • Three day workshop hosted by CPRN for the Brazil dialogue team, Ottawa. Topics covered: deliberative dialogue design methods, issues framing, preparation, analysis and reporting. • Ongoing exchange via e-mail and teleconference to tailor a deliberative dialogue process and questions for the Brazilian context.

October – December 2004: Dialogue Design – Workbook and Methodology • Three day youth dialogue planning workshop in Rio de Janeiro hosted by Brazilian team, with participation by CPRN and IDRC (December). Workshop included regional teams involved with the implementation of the regional dialogues. Focus: development of the workbook and dialogue design – adaptation of methodology to Brazilian context and expertise.

January – May 2005: Dialogue Planning, Preparation and Implementation • Workshops in Rio de Janeiro with CPRN providing support and advice to the Brazil Project team leaders and regional teams to further refine the workbook and the dialogue methodology, prepare the facilitation and analysis teams as well as fine tune the implementation plan. • CPRN advice during implementation phase, with increased activity as the analysis intensified (e.g., assistance with data collection tools, facilitation guides and templates, participant recruitment). • Learnings from the Brazil project (youth appropriate dialogue design and materials) helped inform CPRN’s youth dialogue planning.

June – August 2005: Analysis and Reporting • Joint CPRN- Brazilian research team meetings in Rio de Janeiro to review findings and the draft report, assess lessons learned, successes and challenges of the dialogue project. • Verbal and written input through e-mail exchange. • Refinements to Canadian youth dialogue design and materials drawing on Brazil experience.

September – December 2005: IDRC extends contract with CPRN to achieve two additional purposes 1. Translation of the final report into English to facilitate a more comprehensive review of the process and results. 2. Organize a Brazil-Canada seminar to share methodological and substantive findings emerging from the Brazil project and CPRN’s’ National Youth Dialogue and Summit. • Final report Juventude Brasileira e Democracia: participação, esferas e políticas públicas released December 2005.

January 2006: World Social Forum events in Caracas, Venezuela • CPRN accepted the invitation of Ibase and POLIS to give joint presentations at two WSF events: a seminar on Youth and democracy: participation, spheres and public policies and a Workshop on Dialogues for democratic consolidation. CPRN’s presentations focus on the results of the National Dialogue and Summit while the Brazil project team shared its research findings from the Brazil youth dialogue.

March 2006: Joint Brazil Canada Seminar in Ottawa • Brazil-Canada Seminar: Strengthened Democracies and Engaged Youth in Brazil and Canada – Youth Dialogues, Methodologies, Results, and Policy Implications held in Ottawa, March 27, 2006. Brazil participants: Dialogue Project Team [Pólis and Ibase], a youth dialogue participant from Rio de Janeiro, a representative of the Brazilian government, National Youth Secretariat. Canadian participants: a youth dialogue participant from the Dialogue and Summit, CPRN’s dialogue project team, academics, government officials and IDRC officials.

January – April 2007: The collaboration continues with this book and ongoing discussions

Supporting successful collaboration and shared learning: key factors

In our view the following factors contributed significantly to successful collaboration.

Shared belief in and commitment to the role of youth in strengthening democracy

The research organizations engaged with this project were motivated by a common interest: a desire to strengthen democratic practice and institutions in their respective countries through more effective engagement of young people in civil society and political life. Research in both countries revealed a worrisome trend of declining youth participation and lack of interest in formal political activities. We also shared the view that current research left significant gaps in our understanding of why young people’s participation was declining, what would motivate them to become more politically engaged, and the policy levers required to address the problems. The dialogue projects in Brazil and Canada sought to fill some of these gaps by directly engaging with young people on these issues. While the socioeconomic and political contexts for Brazilian and Canadian youth differ in many respects, our common belief in the value of connecting with young people in a respectful and meaningful way to explore their realities and their aspirations created common ground within which to work together. This shared context and motivation enriched the collaboration.

Respecting and building on Brazilian experience and expertise

As Canadian collaborators, we were well aware of the many and significant Brazilian contributions and innovations to the field of community dialogue and civic engagement. These includes the internationally renowned work of Paulo Freire, pioneering participatory budgeting initiatives in Porto Alegre and other municipalities, and the rich history of solidarity and public mobilization campaigns, most notably around HIV-AIDS.⁶ Moreover, the two Brazilian partners – Ibase and Pólis - are well recognized advocacy and research organizations with excellent track records in Brazil and abroad. This collective experience and expertise conditioned the way in which we approached our role as partners.

We worked to expand our knowledge of the Brazilian context, and to more fully understand the objectives, parameters, challenges and opportunities characterizing the Brazilian youth dialogue. Through an iterative and interactive approach, we collaborated on methods, materials, planning, analysis and reporting. In contrast to a ‘knowledge or technology transfer’ approach, we adopted what may be described as a ‘co-creation’ strategy: we worked together at developing a tailored dialogue design and materials appropriate for the particularities and needs of Brazilian reality, and in doing so learned from one another. The reciprocal nature of the collaboration – featuring mutual learning opportunities for Canada and Brazil – meant that this was much more than a routine contractual relationship involving a simple transfer of expertise and information from the contracted party to the contractor.

Bringing together theory and practice: policy, researchers and practitioners

The team assembled by Ibase and Pólis to plan, implement and report on the youth dialogue project included a network of regional teams including researchers from different disciplines (education, sociology, journalism, political studies), practitioners, youth/community service providers and youth advocates. While all shared commitment to the project, the actors brought quite distinct and different perspectives and motivations to the partnership. For some, influencing government policies and programs was a key driver, while others were more interested in probing new theoretical research questions and methodologies or using the results to support local actions.

This combination of actors in Brazil made for a lively if sometimes challenging milieu in which diverse and interdisciplinary perspectives were in creative tension with one another. The project team was able to manage this tension effectively by engaging and synthesizing these various perspectives. As a result, there was rigorous attention given to both process/design outcomes and to substantive policy outcomes.⁷The spirit of inquiry and intellectual curiosity that the researcher/practitioner/community workers networks demonstrated led to constructive challenging of process design and policy outcomes. It also made for a much richer collaboration than would have otherwise resulted.

Building relationships and trust

Face to face meetings and workshops involving key members of the Brazil project team, IDRC’s Federico Burone and CPRN – both in Canada and in Brazil, from the onset and throughout the project - allowed team members to develop the relationships and trust necessary for successful collaboration. Working visits to each others’ countries allowed us to get to know each other in our respective cultural and social contexts. This greatly assisted CPRN in tailoring advice and assistance to best meet the needs of the Brazilian team. A high degree of trust developed over time as the team got to know each other both professionally and on a personal level - from visiting a favela and dancing the samba together in the streets of Rio, making maple candy in the snow in rural Quebec, navigating the narrow streets of old Montreal, and of course sampling each others’ culinary specialties. This facilitated communication despite the challenges posed by language.

Dialogue challenges in Brazil and how they were addressed

From the onset, the Brazilian project team was curious and keen to learn about dialogue methodologies used by CPRN, particularly that employed in the Citizens’ Dialogue on the Future of Canada: A 21st Century Social Contract. They were also very much concerned with ensuring that the methodology would be relevant to their cultural and political context. They expressed a number of ‘doubts’ and concerns linked to how to adapt the methodology to Brazil’s particular challenges and were forthright in sharing them with us.

These included:

• Brazil is very diverse, large and populous: its geography, cultures, racial make up, class and socio-economic differences, colonial past and political history presented challenges in designing a national dialogue: The challenge revolved around planning and executing a national research initiative that balanced the competing imperatives of a common approach and methodology with the need to tailor for regional realities and contexts. We collectively and individually wondered about how to design the dialogue to be adaptable to such a regionally diverse context. To give some idea of the different scales: CPRN’s dialogues in Canada typically involved day-long dialogue sessions in 10-12 cities across the country engaging about 40 participants in each, for a total between 400-500. The Brazilian Youth dialogue project involved 40 dialogue sessions (five in each of eight provinces) engaging over 1000 youth.
  
  
• Recruiting a representative sample of the youth population: a logistical and methodological challenge: The project team needed to reach youth in favelas where many families do not have telephones and cannot be contacted by recruitment methods normally used in Canada. Beyond the sampling and logistical considerations (CPRN uses a professional polling firm for random recruitment, whereas in Brazil they used their networks), the more important challenge related to the gulf between rich and poor youth in Brazil. Dialogue methodology requires a coming together of socially and economically diverse group of youth to engage and deliberate together – and yet in Brazil interaction across classes is not frequent. We collectively struggled with questions about how to ensure that youth would be able to express themselves and engage in respectful dialogue across the very wide social divide between rich and poor.
  
  
• Literacy challenge: A dialogue workbook, containing factual information and values-based approaches or choices to foster deliberation, is a key element of the deliberative dialogue methodology used by CPRN. It assumes that most dialogue participants are able to read and are comfortable working with printed text as one of the principal sources of information. The literacy rate of youth in Brazil is considerably lower than in Canada. This raised a host of issues about how to adapt the workbook as a tool in the Brazilian context, so as to appeal to youth across the class and cultural divides.
  
  
• Adapting facilitation approaches in small groups and plenary sessions: CPRN’s dialogues typically rely on self-facilitation by participants in small groups, with participants reporting back to plenary, and on professional facilitation in plenary sessions. Would this approach work with Brazilian youth or might they require facilitation in small groups as well? The team wrestled with how to facilitate a respectful and productive dialogue with 40 youth on choices they want to make and trade-offs they are prepared to accept.
  
  
• Moving from process to outcomes to actions: An ongoing challenge faced by both the Brazilians and Canadians is how to design and execute a dialogue so as to build and maintain momentum to effect change beyond the dialogue events, into community and policy actions. This issue was a preoccupation for the team throughout our collaboration on the design, execution, analysis and reporting on the results.

In addition to the challenges posed by methodology, tight timelines (less than 12 months to undertake and report on the dialogue), and the ambitious scope of the project, the language challenges facing the team were not negligible with a mix of Portuguese, English and French used throughout the project.

The authors and CPRN were very impressed with the Brazilian project team’s ability to learn while doing, accommodating a second language (English), adapting the methodology to their realities while ensuring the integrity of the approach. IDRC played an important role in supporting this success - building on its international experience, it provided for face to face exchanges, with interpretation when necessary and for translation of documents.

Methodological adaptations ‘made in Brazil’

• Decentralized approach:
  While CPRN’s practice had been to use a small core team of facilitators and researchers to plan and execute its dialogues, the Brazil project team opted for a decentralized approach. The national team identified and built a network of eight regional teams to plan the dialogues, recruit the youth participants, organize and facilitate 40 dialogues sessions (five each in the eight provinces), and analyze the findings for their region/province. Each regional team included community activists with experience in animation of community groups and academics/researchers, most with some background and interest in youth related issues and some with experience in facilitating youth focus groups.
  
  
• Shared responsibility - core national team and regional networks:
  The core Ibase/Pólis team brought the regional networks together in workshops (with CPRN and IDRC participation) to develop and create commitment to the dialogue methodology and analysis plan - including workbook content, dialogue process facilitation, data collection and analysis - so as to achieve comparable methods in each region. Each regional team provided the core project team with an analysis of their respective dialogue results and participated in subsequent discussions and workshops to review and interpret the overall dialogue results. Several members of the core project team (including external academics and Ibase/Pólis staff) analyzed and synthesized regional results to produce a draft report.
  
  
• Tapping Brazil’s cultural expression to enrich the dialogue:
  The project team built on Brazil’s deep tradition of cultural expression to enrich its dialogue materials and approach. This included a video to complement the workbook, an accessible and lively workbook, youth participants’ use of story telling, poetry and song to express their views during the dialogue and the production of engaging print and broadcast materials to promote the dialogue results to a mass audience.
  
  
• Strategic communications and outreach of results:
  Using the journalistic expertise of Ibase, the project team succeeded in widespread coverage of the dialogue results in regional daily newspapers across Brazil and in the broadcast media (both radio and television). Using youth participants to tell the story in major metropolitan centres across Brazil, they achieved a broad reach.

How this collaboration influenced CPRN’s dialogue with youth

Engaging youth in issue identification and dialogue planning

Our Brazilian colleagues’ concern about framing issues for their dialogue in terms that connect to young people’s realities and with suitable language further stimulated CPRN to find new ways to identify and frame the issues to be explored in its own youth dialogue: National Dialogue and Summit: Engaging Young Canadians in What Matters to Them. To that end, CPRN convened an advisory group of leaders from national and local youth organizations to help frame the issues. These leaders, many in their 20s and early 30s, urged CPRN to directly engage youth up front and throughout the entire dialogue process. Heeding this advice, CPRN partnered with several youth-based organizations to launch an online survey to test issues identified by the Advisory Committee.

This was followed by a workshop to engage with a diverse group of youth from across Canada to further test and explore the identified issues (learning, work, environment and health) from their perspectives. They also provided advice about youth learning needs, including language and presentation and the kinds of facilitated processes that would engage them most in dialogue. Several youth workshop participants continued their involvement, reviewing the content of the workbook to ensure clarity of content, language level and lexicon. Additionally several young Advisory Committee members joined the Youth Dialogue and Summit facilitation team.

The advice from this workshop was reinforced by examples from our Brazilian colleagues. Their dynamic video and illustrated workbook inspired us to develop two illustrated workbooks (Section 1 – Background - Snapshot of Canada; Strengths and Challenges; How Canadians Govern Themselves and Section 2 – Dialogue Issues: Leaning, Work, Health and Environment)⁸ that were a significant departure from our previous workbooks. Learning from Brazil’s use of artistic/cultural expression, CPRN introduced a variety of media and arts in the process, including facilitated collective drumming as a metaphor for dialogue, graphic recording, and creative reporting back, such as theatre and rap (which young participants themselves initiated).

Youth in leadership roles

Discussions with our Brazilian colleagues about the facilitation of small groups and plenary deliberations coupled with similar input from CPRN’s Advisory Committee led us to adapt its usual dialogue process (e.g., providing facilitators for small group deliberations and adopting peer to peer facilitation, with professional coach facilitators). Given that one of the overarching objectives of the dialogue was to empower young people to participate in democratic processes, it was decided to involve them throughout the dialogue process, including facilitating small group discussions and co-facilitating large group dialogues and plenary sessions. Following the example set by the Brazilian team, a pre-dialogue facilitators’ workshop was held, where the youth facilitators worked through a draft design, and were assigned to four teams (three young people and one coach in each team). These teams worked together prior to and throughout the dialogue.

Two youth facilitators – one French speaker and one English speaker – served as emcees throughout the three and a half day dialogue, welcoming the 144 youth participants who came from all corners of Canada. A team of youth facilitators presented the background on the dialogue issues - work, education, environment, health and youth engagement – illustrated with colorful and imaginative visuals. CPRN reviewed their presentations to ensure accuracy of content, but their language and visuals were entirely their own.

Beyond the research report: building commitment to action

The desire by both CPRN and our Advisory Committee to effect change beyond the dialogue events – to be a catalyst for action by youth, institutions and policy makers - led to innovation. Decision makers from public, private and civil society organizations joined the young participants in the third day of the dialogue first to learn from the participants about the kind of Canada they want, to explore together recommendations for moving forward on the substantive issues, and to sharpen thinking on roles and responsibilities for various actors in society (governments, businesses, not-for-profit and community groups), as well as young people themselves. Participation by decision makers in a respectful dialogue with youth (following their own intense two day deliberations) modeled a different kind of relationship that is possible between youth and decision makers in a democracy.

At the end of the event, youth and decision makers alike were invited to make a commitment to action beyond the event. They captured their commitments in a letter to themselves with one copy posted on a Commitment Wall and the other mailed to them out about six weeks after the dialogue event. The dialogue results were captured in two reports – one in the voice of the young people, that presents their vision and values, and the actions they feel are needed to achieve their vision. The other is a more traditional research report, which includes quantitative and qualitative analysis of the results by CPRN, and provides policy implications and recommendations. The reports have been widely disseminated and are publicly available on CPRN’s website, where they have been downloaded over 30,000 times. Unfortunately, CPRN was not nearly as successful as Brazil in attracting media coverage of either the dialogue itself or the results. This is an area for further learning from Brazil.

Since the reports were released (in early 2006), CPRN has launched a research series to expand knowledge about youth civic and political participation with the goal of identifying policy and community actions to encourage and support greater participation.⁹

Successes and reflections

Process and policy outcomes

The Brazil youth dialogue project succeeded in effectively adapting CPRN’s deliberative dialogue method to its own context and in producing results that can help decision makers and civil society groups better integrate Brazilian youth in their society and democracy. The extent to which policymakers act upon the policy recommendations and directions identified in the dialogue report (Brazilian Youth and Democracy: Participation, Spheres and Public Policies) remains to be seen. However, responses to date are encouraging. Follow up initiatives are underway with a focus on educational reforms as a key step in enabling fuller civic participation. In addition Ibase and Pólis are launching a new Latin American youth and democracy project that builds on what they learned from the Brazilian dialogue. It will be important to be able to identify what concrete impact the dialogue results have on policies over time to integrate youth into Brazilian society and to report publicly on them.

New networks leverage action

The creation of new national and regional networks of social action, policy research and community-based organizations with a shared interest in and capacity for public engagement and dialogue work is an important and unexpected outcome of the project, with potential for further collaboration and learning. This network building is an innovation that has good potential for replication in other Latin American countries. It demonstrates the benefits of combining on-the-ground community service with academic research to enrich both fields of endeavour. This fruitful nexus produced more than would have resulted from a traditional research approach. Moreover, the bridges created with decision makers in government offer potential for influencing policy formation and delivery of programs at different levels of government, in order to effect concrete change, for the benefit of young people and all of society.

Reflections on moving forward

Strengthening democratic practice, particularly by engaging youth, is a societal imperative everywhere. If we agree with this premise, then civil society organizations, researchers, activists, politicians and funders share a responsibility to critically examine our work to make sure it is really helping to deepen and improve democratic practices that in turn will make for stronger democracies.

Building on the Brazil-Canada collaborative partnership and our collective experiences with deliberative dialogues, what areas require particular attention if we are to improve our work and demonstrate it is making a difference? We offer the following five areas of dialogue theory and practice for consideration.

1. Focus on the quality of deliberative processes: we need to create meaningful, relevant processes that engage young people on issues of greatest concern to their everyday lives. This includes offering learning opportunities, preparing them to consider and make informed choices, and supporting their responsible actions as citizens in addressing those challenges. We need to find better ways to reach and engage youth, on issues they care about, in language they understand, with a variety of media and means of cultural expression. Critical reflection on our work, further experimentation building on lessons learned and continued exchange will no doubt contribute to improving the quality of deliberative processes.
   
   
2. Ensure that youth have a role in framing the issues for dialogue, in the design and facilitation of dialogues, and dissemination of results in their own environments: if we insist on controlling the content, agenda, process and reporting, then we will fail because we will reproduce the kind of adult/expert centric world in which they feel marginalized rather than empowered. To create the change needed in democratic practice in our countries, we need to model the kind of relationship that supports good democratic practice, including a different way of relating across generations: between young people and ‘older’ decision/policy makers, youth and adult facilitators, youth as social actors and ‘adult’ researchers. Our experience to date has shown that engaging youth at all stages of the process – from issues framing to reporting – makes for more relevant policy research and it benefits youth as well since they learn, develop confidence in themselves, and strengthen their resolve to participate as citizens. This is not an either/or choice. We need to do better at identifying and implementing ways of achieving both purposes well.
   
   
3. Work to improve the quality of policy research: critically examining and improving the rigor of process, data collection instruments, analytic methods and replicability will help build credibility with policymakers, and community actors. This takes resources, intellectual work and time. To contribute to research we need to encourage greater sharing of methods and tools through new venues that promote conversation and innovation. This will help us innovate and improve practice within our own countries and in collaboration with others abroad.
   
   
4. Give greater attention to evaluation: while the field has not yet arrived at broadly accepted frameworks for evaluation (though considerable progress is being made),¹⁰ it is nonetheless important to build in flexible measures to assess the quality of the deliberation, of the analysis and the impact of dialogue results. Wherever possible, conducting follow up assessments with the dialogue participants and with policymakers to examine the influences and effects on individual engagement in public participation beyond the dialogues, as well as the contribution of the dialogue reports and outreach on policy/program formulation at different levels (national, state/provincial, and local) is highly desirable. More systematic approaches to evaluation of impacts on policy and on participants would do much to build credibility in academic, policy and community arenas. We need to build a body of evidence to support the growth and professionalization of the field.
   
   
5. Most importantly, work to build and maintain momentum beyond dialogue events to effect change: young people are sceptical of initiatives that fail to connect to action and some policymakers are dubious about experiential evidence and are dismissive of one-off initiatives. We need to be both thoughtful and creative in synthesizing dialogue results in a way that promotes action by all actors in society. We also need to improve our methods of dissemination to maximize opportunities to leverage results for concrete actions.

Every day the media bombard us with local, nation and international stories portraying disengagement, conflict, and violence, amplifying differences across communities and generations. Mainstream media rarely discusses dialogue and deliberation as an effective way to go about solving societal problems. Fortunately, there are encouraging signs of growing interest in the practice of dialogue and deliberation among politicians, researchers and the public in a number of countries. Groundbreaking initiatives are underway in Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas, in addition to those discussed in this paper that demonstrate the value of these methods in addressing the wicked problems facing society, strengthening communities and the practice of democracy.

However, there is no guarantee that public engagement and the practice of dialogue and deliberation will necessarily take off. If we are going to make it more than an interesting novelty, sustained efforts are needed to shift the way we engage with each other at home and globally around collective problem solving. This will take commitment by practitioners, researchers and funders. The experience of this Canada-Brazil project gives us renewed energy to pursue this goal with passion and determination.

In closing, we applaud IDRC for taking the initiative to sponsor and publish the experience and results of the Brazilian youth dialogue. The Centre is setting an example of capturing and sharing knowledge as a foundation for continued efforts in exploring how to foster and improve deliberative dialogue.

We also salute our Brazilian colleagues for their vision and commitment and for welcoming us to join their learning journey on what we believe is a pathway to strengthened democracy.

Notes

¹  Shor, I., & Freire, P. ‘ What is the ‘Dialogic Method’ of Teaching?’ Journal of Education 169(3), p. 13. (1987)

²  Freire, Paulo,Pedagogy of the Oppressed, chapter 3, Continuum International Publishing Group (1970).

³  The dialogue probed ordinary citizens’ thinking on the roles and responsibilities and the balance between individual choice, collective need, market-based solutions and government involvement, using four policy themes: economic development, poverty and social marginalization, environmental and health risks and international development. The results of the national citizens’ dialogue on Canada’s future are captured in the report Citizens’ Dialogue on Canada’s Future: A 21 stCentury Social Contract, www.cprn.org

⁴  CPRN held its national youth dialogue and summit in November 2005 and the research reports Towards an Action Plan for Canada: Our Vision, Values and Actions http://http://www.cprn.org/en/doc.cfm?doc=1435 Connecting Young People, Policy and Active Citizenship http://http://www.cprn.org/en/doc.cfm?doc=1439) - were released in 2006. Both are available on the CPRN Web site.

⁵  The CPRN team included Mary Pat MacKinnon, Director of the Public Involvement Network, and facilitation expert, Suzanne Taschereau, who was lead facilitator and design expert for several CPRN citizen dialogues. Suzanne in particular also brought considerable international development experience and expertise to the team.

⁶  For an account of Brazil’s successful HIV-AIDS campaign, see Westley, Frances, Zimmerman, Brenda, & Patton, Michael, Geting to Maybe- How the World is Changed, chapter 1, pp. 4-6, Random House (Canada, 2006).

⁷  CPRN’s approach to dialogue work also reflects what is sometimes referred to as a ‘researcher/practitioner’ approach. We are as concerned with and interested in good deliberative processes as we are with policy outcomes.

⁸  To view the workbooks click on www.cprn.org. Production of these workbooks required considerably more time and resources than other dialogue projects and involved a cross section of CPRN researchers.

⁹  More information on this research series can be found in CPRN Network News Winter 2007 – Number 36 - “The Youth/Ballot Box Disconnect” www.cprn.org

¹⁰  For further discussion on this point, see Julia Abelson and Francois-Pierre Gauvin’s paper, Assessing the Impact of Public Involvement: Concepts, Evidence and Policy Implications, (2006) www.cprn.org

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