Designing Dialogues for Complexities with Marginalised Youth: Processes and Tools

Culture, lifestyles, resources and conditions offered by complex realities create challenges, but also ignite opportunities for a meaningful dialogue between the facilitators and marginalised youth that enable empathy, learning and empowerment. We propose a dialogue model that has helped to identify opportunities to motivate and potentially empower the youth to be/become involved in the service innovation and local dialogue with the stakeholders. Through a case study, we demonstrate how we apply this model while working with indigenous San youth in vocational training or higher education courses in Windhoek, Namibia. By taking into account the complexities, tools adapted and developed for enhancing dialogue are introduced. Reflections are made on both the outcomes and the ways that designers restructure their roles as facilitators to enable peer-to-peer exchanges, ongoing dialogues with the youth, and potentially catalyse a transformative process in unlocking situated knowledge, developing skills and capacities of the youth who are part of the fabric of change.