Looking for what makes WTFutures’ projects meaningful

We found that projects can be meaningful experiences to young people in a gradual way:

First of all, by ensuring good participation conditions: the organisers have to provide them with what they need to be at ease;
Then, by integrating educational objectives to the experience: pass on tools and knowledge;
By focusing on the youngsters’ concerns, the workshops also help them make sense and reflect on something they already consider as issues;
Bringing the participants pride and joy throughout the process also makes it a memorable moment;
Finally, building a horizontal, trusting relationship where the youths are being taken seriously and involved in every step, even in the decisions, turned out to be the most valued effort in making the experience meaningful to them.

Ensuring good participation conditions

For ClimateWorks Lab, the City Hive team following them paid special attention to the youngsters’ needs, offering stipends, food, and a flexible schedule. They also focus on overcoming financial and logistical barriers

“Throughout the process, the emphasis was not on perfection or speed, but on agency, adaptability, and ongoing engagement. Meetings always included shared meals, which helped build trust and community. Youth were given financial support through stipends and transit reimbursements, lowering barriers to full participation.”

Pass on the tools and knowledge

An ambitious way to meaningfully integrate young people in foresight practices is to thoroughly train them on future studies methods, then sponsor them to work on it. In 2022, UNICEF Innocenti 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 as consultants to design and participate in research processes to inform UNICEF’s Global Outlook, and create tools for future youth foresight projects (Our Future Pledge).

→ Many other projects linked their work on futures with educational outcomes that will benefit the participants well beyond the project itself: you can find more about them in the relevant sections on Futures Literacy, Climate Change Literacy and Learning New Skills.

Address young participants’ concerns

While Maria de Mater O’Neill was teaching a design class in Fajardo in 2017, Hurricane Maria hit the country. It devastated the region and disrupted local life for several weeks. That was the starting point to develop a methodology around resilience for the young designers, which became the Puerto Rico 2054 project. Here it was meaningful because it was something the students needed at this specific moment, dealing with a difficult and hurtful situation. The futuring process helped the youngsters deal with their emotions and the concrete difficulty of studying in this situation, while the projects they developed made sense in their community and had a concrete impact.

Climate Action Photovoice also has a process to make the theme emerge from the group, so that the participants’ real concerns are discussed.

→ The Youth-led projects, described in another HOW section, have an inherent tendency to be closer to the concerns of youths, with young people taking charge of the entire development of projects.

The practices of care¹ at the heart of some of the projects of our corpus are also participating in making them meaningful experiences (Centre for Reworlding, A Fearless Mural for COP27, Crafting Change through Natural Dye-making). The intergenerational discussions featured in these projects, associated with indigenous ways to share knowledge, were also seen as ways to legitimate young people’s voices in the discussion.

The Eco-anxiety Africa Project (TEAP) also uses this intergenerational lever to help young people legitimate their eco-emotions and cope with them. The project is not about producing something: its goal is solely to help, to support the participants and create a space where they can express their eco-emotions, and help each other process them.

These initiatives are meaningful because they help young participants to make sense of their environment, of what they experience and feel.

Pride and joy as a goal of the project

Obviously, one way of making a project meaningful is for it to produce concrete effects on the ground. As an example, Message Towards the Region developed a real co-creation process involving young people and policy makers to imagine the future of the city of Nitra together.

→ More examples can be found in the Policy section.

Interacting with decision-makers, and perhaps achieving concrete results, is also a source of pride for the young participants, and can help them have a broader view of how they are able to act at the level of their environment and community.

There is also a core and great value in the sole act of creating a place of discussion between young people. That is something they value and that often comes in the feedback of the projects (see Net Zero and You(th) or Générations F). Participants find peers who share their values and do not feel alone anymore.

According to Aniela Fidler Wieruszewska (Feeling Futures Through the Stuff We Wear), it is also deeply important to just make it fun, and creative.

Build an horizontal relationship with the young participants

In the field of research, extractive participation is also a risk that needs to be thought of. The designers of the participatory methods of Youth Futures Under Construction and JustFutures had in mind a similar question: how does this research also serve the participants taking part in it? For Youth Futures Under Construction the method has been co-created with youths as co-authors and researchers. They even constituted youth advisory boards. Then young people are not objects studied in the research but real stakeholders learning something and taking credit from the experience.

During the JustFutures project, Anabela Carvalho and Maria Fernandes-Jesus, who we interviewed, worked in cooperation with different activist groups in Portugal. They initially encountered trust issues with them and had to work their way around it, reform the projects’ organisation and find common interests between their research and the activists’ goals. Despite the additional hard work, it is important for them to bridge research work with the community. This effort was necessary and enabled a lot of learning occasions on both sides.

Imagining Futures / Future Imaginings is another example of deep involvement of youngsters in the management of the process. Youth Advisory Boards were formed in each geographical district to co-design the process, guide ethical practices, and define meaningful forms of expression. It was defined and conceived from the beginning as a collaborative and horizontal project.

UNICEF Innocenti on Meaningful Youth Engagement

In their report “Meaningful Youth Engagement in the Multilateral System”, UNICEF Innocenti wrote a concise definition summarizing the issues around what they define as “Meaningful Youth Engagement” in processes set up by international institutions with the intent of involving young participants.

“Meaningful youth engagement is where children and youth are involved as equal partners; where their views and circumstances are respected; where marginalized youth also get the opportunity to participate; and where youths from all backgrounds are welcome and engaged as agents of change rather than just beneficiaries.”

Several of their recommendations (from page 28 onwards of the report) echo what we found in WTFutures:

“Provide support before, during and after youth engagement” – Support can take multiple forms: clear guidance on the goals, financial resources to cover costs, logistical support, training, networking, professional opportunities…
“Create enabling environments that empower young people” – this recommendation refers to how young participants can delegitimize themselves while talking to older people. There is a need to help them gain confidence in the process.
“Make participation go beyond consultation” – the goal here is to avoid tokenistic participation and give a real place to youngsters’ voices.
“Be inclusive and truly representative of youth voices” - it is crucial to ensure that places for youth engagement are inclusive and representative (young people with disabilities, with unconventional backgrounds, ethnic minorities…) Organizers have to be pro-active to integrate various young people by reflecting on the financial, cultural and physical barriers that may need to be overcome.
“Be accountable” - if there is one thing stopping young people from getting involved in adult-led initiatives, it is the feeling of never being truly listened to or understood. Apart from self-confidence, trust between youngsters and adults is necessary to build a meaningful engagement.

Including both self and community care, this concept is about being attentive to the needs of oneself and others, showing support and compassion, assuming some responsibility towards it and meeting the needs when possible. It recognises that the well-being of all is the result of shared responsibility, despite the power dynamics that govern our interactions. Learn more with Mrs Roots.