Webinar: How can decision makers ensure Youth Influence?

There is a lot of talk about young people’s low democratic self-confidence and their underrepresentation through the classic pathways to influence. At the same time, many seem to struggle with how to ensure young people’s influence in practice. Young people are hard to recruit, they are hard to retain, and it is difficult to ensure real influence on local and national politics.

In this webinar, we share knowledge and methods to ensure youth empowerment and participation in practice. How do we design the spaces and recruitment methods that bring a broad youth group to the table? How can we create the contact and contract between decision-makers and young people when we want to ensure youth political influence? You will hear from young people themselves, from the democracy advisors at We Do Democracy, and from politicians and civil servants in municipalities.

Young Influence is a project implemented by We Do Democracy in collaboration with the Tuborg Foundation and five municipalities (Greve, Vejle, Herning, Nyborg and Guldborgsund). Young Influence aims to ensure a more vibrant democracy for young people. Through a Young Citizen Assembly, 55 young people gathered to give recommendations to the municipalities. At the same time, We Do Democracy, in collaboration with the evaluation institute Social Respons, investigated how youth involvement should be designed and facilitated to ensure the participation of a broad group of young people in the preparation of political recommendations.

In this webinar, we dive into the project’s findings – both the methodological lessons learned by We Do Democracy and the changes the Young Citizens’ Assembly themselves point to in their recommendations.

Read more about the project here.

The Youth Citizen Collection recommendations will be launched in the five municipalities on the following dates. More information can be found on the municipalities’ own websites.

Guldborgsund Municipality – January 8 at 17:00-19:00
Greve Municipality – January 19. January at 19:00
Nyborg Municipality – January 27
Herning Municipality – February 3, 15.15-17:00
Vejle Municipality – February 25