What does youth participation mean?

When thinking about participation we encourage you to think about it in a broad sense. It’s an expression that covers many social contacts and actions (like volunteering) while also referring to values, beliefs and interests (like social justice) that individuals have. 

When we talk about youth participation we should think about a system that builds on the value that young people are equal citizens of society and that they are resourceful concerning any situations they are in. This system should be carefully planned and designed together with young people to allow every stakeholder to have meaningful communication.  

A well-functioning youth participation system maintains this meaningful communication regularly and aims to provide different ways to participate. 

During the project, it was noted based on the experiences of Finnish and Hungarian young people, that the genuine chances to express your opinions and make them heard by the adults were considered highly important for successful youth participation. It’s important that it’s genuinely possible to create an impact and make a change if you join some participation activities, such as a student council at school. The young people also concluded that a meaningful participation experience doesn’t only happen in “official” participation activities like a youth council or a political hearing, but instead, participation can happen in any activity where you aim to make some kind of positive impact to something that feels meaningful for you.

Read more about our experiences about the project implementation in the Finnish Youth Work Magazine Links to an external site..