We’ve just finished recording our Youth Engagement episode, and it has left me truly hopeful.
We spend a lot of time worrying about whether young people are engaged. We spend considerably less time asking whether we are.
Our guests were Abbee McLatchie, Deputy CEO of the National Youth Agency in England, and Paul Stepczak, a community engagement specialist who has co-facilitated nearly 100 co-design events across Wales.
Abbee told us about a campaign that produced the biggest surge in youth voter registration the UK has ever seen, in one day. About 16-year-olds sitting with the Prime Minister, not for a photo, but for a real conversation. And about young people who shaped a national strategy, her hope being that they’re the ones who drive it forward. Owned, sustained, and decided upon by the very people it was built for.
Paul told us about a room in Wrexham where businesspeople, politicians, and 14-year-olds wore the same lanyard. First name. No titles. And what happened when the hierarchy dissolved.
There’s also something in this episode that gave us pause, about why so much well-meaning engagement still falls short. Paul has a name for it. You’ll want to hear it.
One exchange has stayed with me in particular because it made me reflect on our daughter. Our tween talk question: “Is there any point doing anything now, when nobody cares what we think?”
Paul: “I care. Get in those spaces.”
Abbee: “Start from where you are.”
That’s the whole philosophy, really, in two sentences.
Listen In.
And in a few weeks, the floor will be entirely theirs: an episode devoted entirely to youth voice.
Until then, keep listening.
Penny & Jenny Perspectives from the Informed Perspective
