HOW TO BUILD A YOUTH WING

3rd TOPIC
WAYS TO DEBATE AND DECIDE
The Congress is your highest decision-making authority and an extremely important
event to sustain the democracy within the organisation. This is where
the members meet, speak, give their opinion, advice and vote for the coming
Board, which will be elected to serve the members. Therefore make sure that
mechanisms and a culture are in place that ensures a fair representation of different
members during the debates (e.g. minority groups, women etc.).
Different youth wings have different ways of debating the political plan of
action. Some parties will only debate the Political Programme and the proposed
amendments, whereas others are open to all kinds of discussions and decisions
of political proposals – also the ones that have not been proposed previously in
writing to manage and facilitate debate during Congress you can:
1. Communicate a clear deadline for delivery of the proposed amendments.
And make sure to communicate to everybody when and where
on your website they will be accessible.
2. Hand out all papers to members by the start of the Congress.
3. Be careful not to overload the participants with papers. Encourage
everybody to be short and precise in the formulation of proposals,
proposed amendments – and in the formulation of the Political Programme.
Formulating the papers in a short, direct and provocative
manner makes it easy and inspiring to read, react and discuss.
4. Compile an intelligent agenda for the Congress. The most radical proposals
should be the first ones on the agenda. If you do not have time
to discuss all items you can refer the less controversial ones to the first
upcoming Board meeting.
5. Establish your rules on when to vote for what. If a certain paragraph in
the Political Programme is met by a proposed amendment and even
a proposed amendment to the proposed amendment a good rule of
thumb is: Start debating and voting about the most radical of the proposed
amendments, following the second proposed amendment, then
the proposed text. Afterwards, it will be the responsibility of your President
to draw conclusions.
6. Once a proposal has been formulated it is the responsibility of the proposer
to gather support for it. Afterwards the floor is open for everybody
to discuss. It might also be possible to propose an amendment
from the platform.
4th TOPIC
THE RESOLUTIONS
The youth wing will also need to formulate policies during the year responding
to the political developments. This can be done through the formulation of
resolutions during the regular Board meetings. Some resolutions might have
to be approved later by the Congress but in many cases the resolutions will be
day-to-day political comments on specific events and it would not make sense
to address them later during Congress.
HOW TO BUILD A YOUTH WING DANIsH INsTITUTe fOr pArTIes AND DemOcrAcY pAGe 23