Background

Unboxed is a new network of practitioners working with young people on building a better world. It focuses on ways to encourage tolerance, promote participation in decision-making and build leadership on issues of concern to young people.

The Unboxed website has been written by social researchers Lemos&Crane. It is based on research for the City Parochial Foundation (‘Different World') and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (‘The Search for Tolerance').

The website contains information, guidance and more than 50 examples for practitioners under three headings:

• Tolerance - Helping young people to understand and welcome difference.
• Participation - Encouraging young people to contribute positively to decision-making.
• Leadership - Developing leadership skills to help young people strive for social outcomes of their own choosing.

Where did Unboxed come from?

Working with the British Council South Africa, The City Bridge Trust and the City Parochial Foundation, social researchers Lemos&Crane have developed the materials on this website for practitioners working with young people. We want to promote innovative and structured approaches to working with young people on local and international issues where young people can change the world, not just by contributing and volunteering, but by becoming leaders and agents of change themselves with other young people.

Who is Unboxed for?

Unboxed is for:

• Teachers working on citizenship education and PSHE
• Informal education projects
• Youth workers and projects working with young people on social action
• People in the arts and sports working with young people

Working with government

The concepts at the heart of Unboxed (tolerance, participation and leadership) overlap with many government policies, such as:

• Every Child Matters: Public organisations working with children and young people have to ensure they have the support they need for a range of outcomes, including the ability to ‘make a positive contribution'.
• Citizenship education: In response to a perceived fall in civic participation ‘social and moral responsibility', ‘community involvement' and ‘political literacy' are now statutory requirements in the curriculum.
• Community cohesion: Following the disturbances involving youngsters from different ethnic communities in several towns in 2001 there is a duty on schools to work with young people from different communities and bring them together.
• Volunteering: Young people, who need experience of work environments and have spare time, are seen as central to the plan for an increased role for the third sector in public service delivery.
• Human rights promotion: Human rights are now central in domestic law; their promotion is seen as important for justice in the UK and overseas.

The new local authority commissioning framework for children and young people provides an opportunity to influence service provision. Commissioners, providers and inspectors all use Unboxed to improve their work around a common goal and share best practice with one another.

Working for a better world

People will always disagree with one another on which values have the power to create a 'better world'. But if we cannot make our views heard on the matter then a proper debate will not be held. Blind and unfair decisions will be taken without proper scrutiny. For Unboxed there are three concepts without which people cannot air their views and influence decisions: citizenship, human rights and equality.

Citizenship

Citizenship is the political relationship between a citizen and the liberal, democratic state under whose authority he or she lives. As classical philosophy set out, in return for agreeing to abide by the law and its forceful application by the state, a citizen is granted the right to life and protection from other citizens.

Interpretations of this contract have changed over time. Now there is increased emphasis on the responsibility of the state to provide welfare benefits such as education and health services. There is also a greater expectation that citizens will contribute to the good of society through activities such as volunteering.

But citizens should not be confined to only getting involved in such activities as the state encourages or permits. Many local, national and global challenges require people in political and social movements to act on their own behalf beyond the narrow frame of voting in an election every few years.  If people are so confined, then society is not free.

Human rights

Human rights were originally introduced in law to provide practical protection against abuse by state government. They were enshrined in law following the barbarism of World War II to ensure that individuals living in signatory territories would always be able to challenge the state and change its course through legitimate political action.

Since then their remit has widened to include new rights and the emphasis has shifted so that they are now to be applied across a range of public arenas. Human rights considerations now cover employees and consumers as well as citizens. Government has also become one of the main promoters of human rights. In 2007 a major new body, the Commission for Equality and Human Rights, was brought in.

But government cannot be the sole agent of human rights. The human rights movement came out of a realisation that states have so much power that legal checks are required to protect the individual. In the end it is naïve to expect the state to protect our human rights for us.

Equality

Equality for all, regardless of race, religion or sex, was first publicly demanded during the civil rights movement in the 1960s in the USA. Here was the first popular assertion that the state could not pass laws, on education or marriage for example, which enshrined unequal treatment. The UK introduced legislation outlawing forms of racial hatred in the mid-70s and since then it has added further laws (right up until the present day) banning discrimination on the basis of  race, religion, sex, gender, disability and age.

But it is not clear that legislation can be the only protection against discrimination and inequality - nor that the state should be the sole upholder of these values. After all, the state itself sometimes engages in activities which could be interpreted as unequal, such as by permitting state schools to select pupils on the grounds of religion. In the end it is the people who must insist they are treated equally and fairly, not the state.