Youth participation means you are actively involved in decision-making processes. It means you’re part of activities, organisations, government and community structures, and engaged in issues that affect you1, because you have the right to participate.
Meaningful youth participation means
You are empowered: You have greater control over your life through access to support and pathways to opportunities.1
You have purpose and are engaged: You take on valued roles, addressing issues that are relevant to you, and influence real and meaningful change.1
You are included: All young people should be able to participate, regardless of background, lived experience, culture, where you live, your gender, disability status or sexuality.1
This list is not complete and there are so many ways you can participate. It can be done in whatever way works for you and should be accessible for you.
The above approaches to youth participation are examples of common ways that you can participate. Often governments, local councils and organisations will use these methods to involve you, but, if these are only offered as a once-off or you’re not informed about how your contributions will be used then be aware that it could be a Doing something (such as hiring a person who belongs to a minority group) only to avoid criticism and give the appearance that people are being treated fairly.tokenistic effort.
You should expect and could advocate for deeper engagement and meaningful participation.
Some ways you could do this:
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Advocate for ongoing opportunities for young people to be involved, either throughout the life of the project or beyond. For example: by creating an ongoing advisory group; running a co-design process to solve a problem; or developing youth consultant roles.
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Ask how your feedback is going to be used and how you will be kept in the loop of updates.
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Let the organisers know that you want to be notified about the outcomes of your contributions.
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Ask for ongoing meetings to check in about a project throughout its life cycle. These could be every six months or quarterly.
- Youth Affairs Council Victoria. (2023). Youth Participation. https://www.yacvic.org.au/training-and-services/youth-participation/