Learnings on the Importance of Youth Engagement

By Anna Ibru and Dane Gambrell

Approximately 40% of Chile’s elderly population suffers from depression. Many nursing homes face challenges in providing adequate physical and mental stimulation for their elderly residents. To address this unmet need, in 2021, Natalia Alfaro Pedrero, a 21-year old civil engineering student at the Universidad de la Frontera en Temuco, launched Sembrando Sonrisas (Sowing Smiles), to build greenhouses that serve as wellness spaces for elderly residents at two nursing homes in the Araucanía region of Chile. Her project aims to improve the lives of residents by offering physical activities like gardening as well as opportunities for social engagement among residents. Sembrando Sonrisas is one of 48 projects designed, funded and implemented through Chile’s Creamos program, an annual youth challenge competition from the Chilean government to support social innovation and participation by Chilean youth.

In recent years, public institutions around the world are piloting new youth engagement initiatives like Creamos that tap the expertise and experiences of young people to develop projects, programs, and policies and address complex social challenges within communities. 

To learn from and scale best practices from international models of youth engagement, The GovLab at Northeastern University has develop case studies about three path breaking initiatives: Nuortenbudjetti, Helsinki’s participatory budgeting initiative for youth; Forum Jove BCN, Barcelona’s youth led citizens’ assembly; and Creamos, an open innovation and coaching program for young social innovators in Chile. For government decision makers and institutions who are looking to engage and empower young people to get involved in their communities, develop real-world solutions, and strengthen democracy, these examples describe these initiatives and their outcomes along with guidance on how to design and replicate such projects in your community. Young people are still a widely untapped resource who are too-often left out in policy and program design. The United Nations affirms that it is impossible to meet the UN SDGs by 2030 without active participation of the 1.8 billion youth in the world. Government decision makers and institutions must capitalize on the opportunity to engage and empower young people. The successes of Nuortenbudjetti, Forum Jove BCN, and Creamos provide a roadmap for policymakers looking to engage in this space. 

Youth Engagement in Action

Nuortenbudjetti is a participatory budgeting platform that empowers young people in Helsinki (ages 12-17) to co-design and co-implement youth-led projects with the help of service workers in the city government. Since Nuortenbudjetti’s inception in 2013, young people across Helsinki have developed more than 120 proposals. Roughly two-thirds of these proposals are implemented each year, leading to the creation of projects like Kesäseteli, a Summer Job Voucher program that was implemented in 2019, whereby the city of Helsinki provides supplemental funding to companies that recruit young people between the ages of 16-17 years old. Click here to read the full case study.

Fig 1: A screenshot showing the phases of the participatory budgeting process. 

Forum Jove BCN is a “citizens’ assembly'' where 99 young people (ages 16-29) deliberate about key challenges and then develop recommendations for Barcelona’s City Council. The citizens’ assembly focuses on policies that impact the lives of young people in the city. The assembly allows these young people to develop recommendations for the Barcelona City Council around issues that impact young people in the city such as education, mental health, and emancipation. Twenty of these policy recommendations have been approved for implementation by the Barcelona City Council. Click here to read the full case study.

Fig 2: A photo from a participant during the return session of the #FòrumJoveBCN deliberative assembly at the Saló de Cent in Barcelona.  

Creamos is an open innovation competition for young people (ages 15-29) in Chile that  provides mentorship, training, funding and support for young people to design and implement social innovation projects. As of 2022, 48 projects developed by Creamos’ participants have been implemented across Chile. The projects range from Formación sexual integral para adolecentes (Comprehensive sexual education for adolescents) that called for the creation of workshops for women about sexual and reproductive health, to ¡Voy Contigo! (I am with you) that focused on developing a  volunteer network to give a helping hand to elderly people in Chile. Click here to read the full case study.

Fig 3: A photo of the Creamos logo.

To learn more about how public institutions are engaging residents to solve problems, visit https://collective-intelligence.thegovlab.org/