Selective Participation – The Disempowerment amongst Bario Youth in Sarawak Malaysia

Abstract

Participation is one part of an element of the empowerment; with it a person can control their capitals to gain their needs without depending outsiders. However, in reality, the issues concerned by public are always about the lacking of participation of youth in a local organization. Without participation, a youth will be in the state of disempowerment. To be more specific, this article listed out three research objectives; to describe the Bario youth’s participation in community organizations; to identify the factors of youth’s participations; to identify a barriers faced by Bario youths to participate in organization. This research studied on those issues encountered among Bario youth in Sarawak. This study was conducted through a survey research framework and the samples were chose by convenience sampling. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistic; the percentages and mean presenting the data. The result showed that, Bario youths were not participated in the local organization, especially when the organizations were dominated by other groups of age. They were participated in the organization by which they are free to make a decision on behalf of their affairs. The barrier is, the other group ages did not give chances to them in contributing their efforts to the organization. By considering those realities, researchers decided that Bario youths were disempowerment.

Keywords: Participation, barriers of participation, empowerment, disempowerment.