The Youth Participation Strategy Steering Group Starts its Work

Full of energy and enthusiasm for enhancing meaningful youth participation, the new Steering group have started their work on monitoring and reviewing the Youth Participation Strategy. Having worked since January, with individual work and onboarding, the group met for the first shared residential meeting from 18-21 March 2024 in Tallinn, Estonia. 

How far have we gotten with implementing the Youth Participation Strategy? What more should be done and what could be done differently? The Steering group is intent on keeping the Strategy alive and looking at it critically. Throughout the year, with the support of youth researcher Dr Dan Moxon and involving stakeholders of the Strategy, they will monitor the progress of each of the aims of the Strategy and see what can and should be changed in the future, producing recommendations and advocating for necessary changes. They are also planning diverse ways to promote meaningful youth participation in various contexts, and implementing interesting activities related to it, such as preparing activities for Participation Forum 2024, working with the Youth Participation Toolkit, ideating on improvements necessary for the participation of young people with fewer opportunities and many more.  

To set the ground for this meaningful work ahead, the group started with the first residential meeting – getting to know each other, building the team, sharing their understanding of the Strategy and youth participation, setting the team agreements, and imagining what their work and tasks will look like for the mandate (until the end of 2025). Emma Goldman’s quote “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution”, set the mood of the first meeting, emphasizing the importance of enjoying the process.

Following the first challenging steps of building the tasks and vision of the group, done in a participatory manner as much as possible, the group will work together until the end of 2025, with various online and residential meetings evaluating the Strategy, producing recommendations and implementing diverse activities individually and in a group. If you would like to be involved and contacted by the Group, leave your contact information here.