As Australia has a markedly different cultural heritage and markedly different patterns of socio-economic development from most of its near neighbours, it does not seem very useful merely to describe aspects of our youth programmes. Most of them would be quite irrelevant to the needs of other countries within the Asian-Pacific region. Accordingly, I have decided to deal with a topic of central interest, making use of the extent to which my experience (which is mainly Australian) enables me to set down some analytic ideas which may be useful for further discussion.