Generation Hope: Young People in a Changing World 1.8.3  Employment and Opportunity 1.8.5  Civic Participation Opportunities to gain employment in secure and meaningful jobs, or pursue financial independence, are a key feature of a wellfunctioning society. Without access to employment or dignity of labour young people are unable to develop skills, become established as independent citizens or maintain an adequate standard of living and quality of life. For this reason, measures of employment and financial independence are important indicators of youth development. Civic engagement and community development can take many forms, including through sport, religious groups, music, drama and the arts. Data for such participation are not easily available for global comparison. Civic engagement is a key marker of human development and full incorporation into society, and complementary to political participation. 1.8.4  Political Participation The participation of young people in the political life of their communities shows the extent to which they are empowered and engaged in the political process and have a voice in the development of their communities. Participation promotes social integration, combats exclusion, promotes youth development, and – by giving young people a stake in their society – creates bonds between generations. 1.9 The main limitations of the Youth Development Index The YDI is only as good as the data informing it. One of the key findings of the research informing the YDI is that currently there are not enough data to measure youth development adequately in some countries. The problem is more acute in some domains – such as Civic Participation and Political Participation – than others. The challenge is particularly stark in developing countries that have a limited capacity to invest in data collection. The YDI is also constrained because it focuses on nationallevel data, which can sometimes mask variations in outcomes at the sub-national level. Box 1.2 Toolkit for developing national YDIs The global YDI is constructed with national-level data that international agencies currently collect on key indicators of youth development. While this facilitates comparison of YDI scores between countries and regions, it does not provide any insight on variations and inequalities in youth development within a country. Therefore, to assist countries in gauging and comparing levels of youth development within a country, the Commonwealth Secretariat has developed a toolkit which governments and others can use to construct their own national or sub-national YDIs. National level YDIs can thus be constructed using additional data that may not be available at a global level, and/or that is deemed critical to youth development in a particular country’s context, and taking advantage of geographic, age, gender and rural/urban disaggregations as available. The toolkit can be downloaded from the YDI website: http:// youthdevelopmentindex.org. Such national level YDIs can help governments develop more evidence-based policies, guide them in improving the allocation of resources, or assist statisticians, NGOs and others in the evaluation of youth development programmes within a country. There are, however, often serious shortcomings in the quality and quantity of data available on young people at the sub-national level, particularly in developing countries, so national statistics bodies and international organisations must also prioritise the collection of age, location and genderdisaggregated development data at the subnational level. \ 15