VOICES OF YO UTH
SURVEY ON YOUT H IN BIH
Quantitative R esear ch Findings
A relatively low percentage of the young people were members of organisations, whether youth, political or religious organisations. Those respondents who stated that they were members of one or more organisation most commonly reported belonging to a political party (9.1%), followed by youth organisations (7.3%) and youth organisations belonging to political parties (5.8%). It was more common for respondents from the general population to be members of political parties (10.2%), compared to young people belonging to vulnerable groups (3.1%). Considerably more female respondents were members of environmental and professional organisations compared to male respondents. Graph 11 shows data on the attitudes of the respondents concerning the work of youth organisations. The majority of respondents had a positive opinion (‘Positive’ or ‘Very positive’) on the work of youth organisations in their city/municipality (72.3%, compared to 55.6% in 2008); however, the respondents from vulnerable groups far more often held a very negative opinion on this (8.0%), compared to respondents from the general population (4.2%).
Graph 11: What is your opinion of the work and projects of YOUTH organisations and associations in the territory of your municipality/city? (Comparison between 2008 and 2011/2012)
Most young people were not engaged in voluntary activities and most commonly stated not being asked as the reason. Only 10.3% of the respondents voluntarily devoted their time and skills to work in the community/local organisation or a group; respondents from the general population were much more often involved (11.1%) compared to vulnerable groups (5.4%). The largest percentage of those respondents who donated their time did so once or twice per year (49.6%), while approximately one-fifth of respondents (20.2%) donated their time once per month. Approximately every fifth respondent (20.7%) volunteered once or several times per week, while 9.5% of them were engaged at this level only for a few months. The highest percentage of respondents who did not work on a voluntary basis gave the reason that nobody asked them to do so (38.9%). This reason was far more common amongst respondents from vulnerable groups (45.9%), compared to respondents from the general population (37.6%). Slightly less than a quarter of respondents cited a lack of time as the reason (24.4%); this reason was reported more often by respondents from the general population (26.4%, compared to 13.8% in vulnerable groups). This was followed by a lack of awareness concerning the possibilities for voluntary work (15.9%), lack of interest (15.1%), the attitude that voluntarism is a form of exploitation (2.3%) and that voluntary work has no effect at all (2.0%) and other reasons (1.4%). For additional information on the reasons given for not participating in voluntary work see Graph 12.
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