Why a Youth Forum?

Youth Forums are structured events led and organised by students within and among schools to express their ideas, opinions and proposals concerning relevant topics with a democratic decision-making process. They build student’s skills to act consciously within and outside schools towards a more democratic and equal society.

Future Youth Schools Forums has been designed to guide you through a 10-step process to set up a participatory, active citizenship experience on local – global issues. As you progress through the website, you will be led through the steps you need to take to either set up and participate in a Youth Forum as an Organising School, or to attend another schools Youth Forum as a Participating School. Read more

Welcome to Future Youth Schools Forums (FYS-Forums)! We are here to help you create and participate in a Youth Forum in your school.

We will guide you in organising, implementing and participating in a Youth Forum in order to support students to learn, think and take action on global issues.

REGISTER IF ...

• You are a school organising a Forum. This will allow you to network with your participating schools, blog and connect with national and international schools.
• You are a school participating in a Forum. This will allow you to network with the organising school, attend the Forum, blog and connect with national and international schools.

Both the Learning Resources and the Skills Workouts can be downloaded without registration.

TEAM = Together Everyone Achieves More!

Keeping in mind the students’ profiles identified in the previous step, decide internally how you want to select the representatives from the school. In some cases, the Organising team and Participants team could be the same, in others you might want to open this opportunity of participation to more students.

Communication Will Lead to a Successful Forum

Carrying out a Forum means having many people attending and participating. However, what happens if we do not tell people about the Forum’s existence? Or if we do not communicate it effectively? As soon as you have a date and a time, as soon as the Forum idea has been decided and all those initial questions have been answered, you have to let other people know about your Forum!

Making the Forum a Whole School Event

Even if only some of your schools' students will be directly involved in the Youth Forum, it is important to raise awareness in the whole school about the topic and the activities taking place in school.

If you have reached this step, you are getting ready to organise your Forum. This is a core moment for you to get things done, put into practice what you have learnt so far in term of contents and practical skills.

For this reason, you will find:

• An A to Z plan on how to plan and organise a Forum. It will help keep you on track;
• More of our Learning Resources. The Participants Learning Pack will support you in preparing your action proposals to be discussed during the Forum;
• More of our Skills Workout to have fun while experiencing problem solving, constructive feedback, flexibility and negotiation and persuasion skills.

Check List

We provide you with everything you need to organise your Forum. An A to Z plan on how to organise a Forum has been designed to help keep you on track. You’ll have access to more of our Learning Resources here as we have also designed a Participants Learning Pack to deepen the knowledge and critical thinking skills of those students who will be participating in the Forum which should be worked through in the weeks running up to the event

The day has arrived… What to do?

Finally the day has come! Remember that this is a milestone of a longer process that will see every participant actively involved in sharing action proposals and creating connections to keep working together over the school year.

Defining your Action

How was the FYS Forum? Did you enjoy it? What have you learned? How will you use new contacts and ideas?Organise an evaluation meeting of the FYS-Forum to debrief the experience and start discussing about how to follow up.

A step by step idea

Following the instructions in the Workshop 7 of the Participants Learning Pack by the end of the activities you should have: Defined the action. Prepared a list of activities and decided what is feasible (considering costs and resources). Then prioritise. Allocated roles and responsibilities within the group.

Share your Social Actions

Upload and share links to articles, photos, videos you are using to disseminate your action! All schools are expected to participate in a national webinar to share their actions and reflections from the Forum!

Conducting your webinar

Here you can find all the necessary information you will need in order to conduct your webinar and get in touch with other schools that organise or participate in a Forum.

Congratulations! You have become part of a global movement for change, taking action on an issue you care about and becoming part of the change that you want to see in the world.

We hope your journey doesn’t end here!

Stay in touch with us using the Contact Form, we will love to hear from you.