has 3 more followers since mentioning it in the most recent blog.
has 3 more followers since mentioning it in the most recent blog.
Latest Blog: Let’s Blame it on the P-Platers - http://projectyoursay.tumblr.com/. What do u feel about the drivers on our roads?
This blogging experiment has reaffirmed to me that it is extremely difficult to encourage and get other young people engaged in participarting in pretty much anything that might turn out to be remotely useful. This an issue I have struggled with for many years now within my local community. I have been a member of various community and leadership groups of young people in the Wingecarribee Shire for about 6 years now and by far the biggest issue faced by the groups is raising the participation levels of other young people who may not be as motivated. There have been a number of occasions where these groups have organised youth concerts, bands nights, art competitions and dance nights only to have a very small number of entrants or audience members show up. This can be extremely dissapoint to the young people involved in the organisation and can sometimes lower morale. This lack of participation is not to say that we haven’t tried but there is only so much you can say and only so many steps you can take in order to get people involved.
So knowing this why did I try to create an interactive youth blog? To be honest, I chose the project as it fitted in with my existing interests and if it was successful, I would look to possibly continue with it into the future in order to promote youth issues and participation, as well as use it as a promotional tool for the community groups I am a member of. Sadly, this experiment was not successful in my eyes. I could not get one other young person to write a blog nor comment on ones that I had written myself. I tried following a nucleus of people on twitter from both The Southern Highlands and Illawarra (it must be noted that it seems Twitter has not really taken off with the young people of The Highlands as Southern Highlands tweeters seem to be few and far between). From the nearly 100 people I followed at the beginning, only 20 people decided to follow me back. It makes me think how hard is it just to click a button and follow me back. I’m not asking much. I also tried directly addressing my follower with questions such as ‘what grinds your gears?’ and didn’t receive one @reply. My initial plan was to keep my identity hidden, but after getting frustrated with getting no feedback, I decide to go public on my personal Facebook page, appealing to my 400 odd friends to wirte a blog about something they are passionate about. A couple (meaning literally 2 people) commented, but no blogs.
I thought this project would be more likely to get young people involved than say being involved in community groups because a) its not like people had to contribute much other than a couple of hundred words and i’m not forcing people to leave their houses and b) basically because young people seem to like whinging. While ideally I would have liked to have been able to write more blogs and spend more time chasing people on Twitter, I was restricted timewise being a full-time uni student, casual worker and active community member, so I acknowledge that I may have achieved a higher participation rate if I had more time. However, it is time for young people to open their eyes and realise that participation is the key to getting things done and moving foward. You must follow your words with action.
This year has really opened my eyes to the amount of poor drivers on our roads and just how frequently people take stupid risks. 2009 has seen me travelling 3 to 4 days a week down to Wollongong from the Highlands to attend classes at the university. Before this I rarely drove outside of the Highlands because I really had no reason to do so. My first observation is that there are far too many drivers of all ages (not just P-Platers who seem to get stuck with the worst reputation) who speed. Speed limits seem to be just a suggestion. It’s so common to drive 10-15km/h over the speed limit that it’s almost acceptable to do so. What annoys me more is people who take ridiculous risks while speeding, such as speeding on wet roads and cutting off other drivers especially trucks. Speeding to me seems completely unecessary. I would prefer to arrive somewhere late than to not arrive at all.
“Baby on Board” signs grind my gears when I see them on cars speeding past. I acknowledge that the purpose of those signs is so people who attend a car accident site can check the back seat of the car for an infant, but if you really care that much about the safety of your baby, then why are speeding and driving recklessly?
Another pet hate on the roads, are people who drive 4WDs or large utes and think that they are king s#*t. Just because your car is bigger than mine does not give you the right to drive like a moron and force smaller cars off the road in order to avoid you. And besides aren’t those vehicles designed to be the ones driving off the road?
Finally - tailgaters be warned. If I ever catch a tailgater behind me I will tap my breaks and deliberately drive just below the speed limit just to piss you off.
YouTube video of how some people depict Bowral. Do you agree? http://bit.ly/THvAA
Here is a video I have found on YouTube where young Highlands residents are expressing their views on the area. Do you agree?
