The young changemakers

Participation should change something

An event can celebrate young people while leaving every important choice to someone else. A microphone and a photograph are not the same as influence.

UNESCO’s meaningful-engagement guidance calls for participation beyond attendance or compliance, including a role in shaping learning and school decisions. That provides a useful standard for a story about young changemakers: what did their participation actually change?

Start with the work

Introduce a real project, its purpose and the people who have agreed to be named. Explain the decisions the young participants made, the support they received and the limits they encountered.

Avoid inventing a heroic founder to make an idea sound established. If the project is proposed, call it proposed. If a result is preliminary, describe the observation and what remains to be tested.

Adults can support a group without taking its voice. A useful mentor helps with access, preparation and responsible decisions while leaving room for participants to explain what they want to achieve.

Show the learning as well as the outcome

A group may discover that its first plan did not address the problem. That revision can be part of the achievement. What did they hear from other people? Which choice became more difficult once the work began?

Do not make every project prove that it changed the world. A reliable improvement to one school, street or service can be a meaningful result. Explain it at the scale the evidence supports.

A good profile leaves another young reader with a route in: a contact, an appropriate opportunity or an idea small enough to try with support. The most encouraging story is not ‘Somebody exceptional did everything.’ It is ‘These people had a useful part to play, and here is how the work became possible.’