By Alawi Masud

This week, Accountability Lab and the Government of Korea are hosting a bootcamp for the 2021 Open Government Partnership Summit’s youth delegates. Catch the Day 1 recap here. 

By introducing the youth delegates to the OGP Youth Toolkit, a resource currently in development by Accountability Lab, today’s session focused on how policymakers can engage youth and develop policies that help them. This toolkit, designed in consultation with the Open Gov Youth Collective and OGP government point of contacts, guides youth organizations and government representatives on how to engage young people through OGP processes and plans.

During the bootcamp, delegates provided feedback on and generated new ideas for the toolkit. They then participated in a policy development activity, where they collaborated in small groups to address the problems of a hypothetical case study. Below are some ideas and quotes from the delegates themselves:

How to Include Youth as Co-Creators, not just Participants

• “Include youth how they want to be included.” Reilly Martin, United States
• “Involving youth should truly be inclusive – across all walks of life, rural and urban, and across sectors and interest groups.” Vino Lucero, Philippines
• “Build bridges to the future by guaranteeing young generations’ voices and participation in the decision-making process.” Sohee Yang, Korea
• “Follow up. We might hear from policymakers, but we aren’t able to loop back with them. A lot of strategic plans, community engagement, survey after survey – but what happens after that? Why not include us all the way?” Reilly Martin, United States

What Successful Youth Engagement Looks Like

• “Youth participation is normalized. Governments no longer characterize proposals made by young people as ‘youth proposals’ but rather according to applicability and contribution to improving open government practices.” Rafael Leite, Brazil
• “Young people can finally feel the utility of politics.” Seong Su Park, Korea
• “Seeing our demands in a law after sitting at the decision-making table.” Fabio Rotondo, Italy 
• “A part of decision making, not only a subject of tokenism.” Ilma Rivai, Indonesia
• “Resources are allocated based on the gaps we see.” Gülşen Güler, United Kingdom

Kibo Ngowi