Statsrådens tale på EXPO 2000

The speach of the Minister of Children and Family Affairs
Karita Bekkemellem Orheim
Held 20-09-2000 at the EXPO 2000 in Hannover

Dear young friends

As Norwegian minister of children and family affairs - including youth policy - I'm proud and happy to welcome you to this conference on democracy and young peoples participation in society. Six European countries are represented here today - France, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Sweden and Norway - and together you'll be looking forward to the future. And the stage is perfect; Expo 2000 where the future itself is said to celebrate a premiere these days.

A workshop of ideas

Today and tomorrow we are going to celebrate this conference which I like to think of as a workshop of ideas. Your ideas, experience and commitment will hopefully bring success to this conference. From where stand I can see more than twenty-four young people with different culture and background eager to start and shear ideas. We need your energy and I am grateful that you all want to participate in this workshop. We do need young people who want to get involved in the construction of the future. In fact the future is where you are going to spend the rest of your life! And I am sure that you all bring with you knowledge and inventiveness from home to share with your foreign companions.

Participation is important

All European societies are facing the dilemma that yesterday's solutions do not always match today's problems. Young Norwegians often refer to this as a problem, and I think the situation is more or less the same in your countries. I thought so myself being a teenager, and maybe that was the reason why I became a politician. But this is not the only way to have influence. If you want you can make this conference an important arena. It is necessary that we all are aware of the fact that the society changes so rapidly that a gap may arise between existing policies and the ability to cope with new challenges. Participation by young people is extremely important in this situation.

Young people are growing up digital and communicate in their own way

In previous times, when our societies were less complex, more or less all learning took place in the form of transfer from one generation to the next. In our modern societies the learning process has become different and more complex. For instance a significant amount of cultural transfers take place in the form of processes between young people, within their own country as well as between countries. We know that growing up digital has made a rise of the net-generation. And as the communication is taking short cuts like BRB (be right back) and U4W (you for ever), this is everyday communication for you but a language more or less unknown for the grown ups.

You serve as antennas, picking up signals

This illustrates that another dimension of learning has emerged. In certain fields the adult community receives so much input from young people that the traditional learning process has been reversed. There are several reasons for this. Young people spend more time on their education and are older than earlier before settling with a job and a family. This freedom from responsibility makes you less bound by convention, more open to alternatives and quick to pick up new ideas. In this way you serve as antennas; picking up signals too faint for adults to notice. This applies to a number of areas, including gender equality, opposition to violence and racism, homophobia, involvement in the environment, new trends in fashion and music, and especially in relation to the new media.

Given this dimension - the third dimension so to speak - it is perhaps more important than ever to secure participation in society by children and young people.

The crucial question is: how long can you keep in control and manage the development of your own culture and identity? Beware that there will always be strong commercial interests alert to exploit good ideas. To day you represent new resources and are agents of change. How this potential is to be utilised is largely up to the adult societies, but it is also up to you.

I wish you all the best for this conference and your Expo-visit. I also wish you luck in your further work to make our societies more open regarding young people's participation.

Thank you for your attention!