Our Future Pledge: An agenda for futures by youth is a toolkit and global campaign created by the first cohort of “UNICEF Youth Foresight Fellows” from across the globe, gathered by UNICEF Innocenti. It presents three “scenarios” for the future (Cries and crises, Inclusivity and resilience, Disruption), but it also shares the data used to craft the scenarios, as well as tools for others to imagine their own scenarios.
Our Future Pledge
Country(ies)
USA, Italy, International
Organisation(s)
UNICEF “Young Foresight Fellows”
Year(s)
2023
Our Future Pledge: An agenda for futures by youth
Our Future Pledge: An agenda for futures by youth is a toolkit and global campaign created by the first cohort of nine “UNICEF Youth Foresight Fellows” from across the globe, gathered by UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight.
Here is a video for the campaign announcement on X.
What
The toolkit presents three scenarios, presented as three “rooms”, each corresponding to a different climate-informed future:
- “Cries and crises” (collapse, control and child exploitation): Unchecked climate change and social inequalities have made lives “short and hard again”. Hope comes from a “child corporation”, a mix of humanitarian action and neo-slavery.
“This scenario suggests that young people are acutely aware of the challenges posed by climate change and are concerned about their future in a world where action is not taken to address it.” - “Inclusivity and Resilience” (technology and knowledge as sources of interconnection, understanding – and solutions): Sustainability, equality and inclusivity are the norm, digital technology supports shared knowledge and understanding, “prosperity is a shared goal”. “Exponential growth in inclusivity of women, marginalized communities, special needs, and refugees rights had unlocked better futures for all. People felt empowered to respond to issues of resource management, wars, and food crises with a shared vision for international collaboration and peace policies.”
“This scenario suggests that young people place a high value on [equitability and sustainability] and are willing to work collaboratively to achieve them.” - “Disruption” (technology and privatization): Technology has advanced in giant leaps, everything is privatized. People with means live much longer lives in gated areas. Others find some liberty and accomplishment in virtual space. Privacy is a thing from the past.
“This scenario suggests that young people are highly aware of the potential pitfalls of technology and are concerned about its impact on society.”
Which one is the authors’ “preferred future” seems obvious. However, they took care to mention a fourth, empty room, inviting others to write their own preferred future.
How
In 2022, UNICEF recruited a group of young foresight practitioners from around the world to become its first cohort of “Youth Foresight Fellows”. Fellows worked with UNICEF over the course of six months to design and facilitate a comprehensive foresight research process to inform UNICEF’s Global Outlook which provides an annual in-depth analysis of trends and events impacting the rights and wellbeing of children across the globe.
Using the insights from this research process, Fellows were given the freedom to design a product that would make futures thinking more accessible to young people. Our Future Pledge is what was created.
It initially presents itself as a form of time travel to three “rooms” representing three different futures (in 2042), inviting the traveler, when coming back, to learn from what they saw in these futures and act on it: “It was a stark reminder of the interdependence we all share and the responsibility we have to create a more just and equitable future. Running from the room, I knew that I could no longer remain a bystander. I had to take action to ensure that we build a future where no child is left behind.”
The nine young futurists who created Our Future Pledge saw it, not as a finalized document, but as a tool for other youth foresight projects. In the report, they provide the data and analyses they used to build their three “rooms”, as well as a simplified guide for readers to do their own scenario-building. The intent was for #ourfuturepledge to become a sort of campaign to share the futures they want.
Next steps
Following this, UNICEF Innocenti also published a “Youth Foresight Playbook”. It provides guidance to futurists and non-futurists willing to set up a “youth-centered journey to the future”, wherever they are.
Aside from classic, basic foresight tools (the Futures Wheel, scenarios, backcasting…), it connects foresight approaches with UNICEF’s 10 “principles for meaningful youth engagement” in foresight: Respect, Participation, Ownership, Collaboration, Experimentation, Transparency, Accountability, Flexibility, Skills-building, and Compensation.