Youth Consultations for Advocacy, Making Each Voice Count.

Short summary

To increase the legitimacy of your advocacy and to ensure meaningful and inclusive participation of young people in advocacy processes, country teams could include youth consultations in their advocacy work. We can train young people and adults in how to set up a good youth consultation and on the different methods and approaches that can be used.

What capacity strengthening support can we provide on this topic? 

• We support young people in the process of doing consultations, and on how to use the results of the consultations. 
• Following the training and toolkit not only contributes to skills building but it also empowers the young people, both those doing the consultations as the ones who are consulted as it also invites the participants to look into their motivations, values and personal style. 
• Participants learn how to do consultations, setting goals, listen and learn, but also on how to use the findings of the consultations for influencing others and creating space for young people’s voices. 
• The outcomes of youth consultations can serve as a solid base for stakeholder submissions to different advocacy processes, such as the UPR. We would advise to link Inclusive Youth Consultations to a specific advocacy report or event, to ensure the outcomes are being used effectively. 

What could the CS look like? 

• By (co)-facilitating a 3 day (online) workshop on youth-consultations 
• By sharing our youth friendly toolkit on how to run youth consultations 
• By holding themed webinars on how to hold youth consultations 
• Our expertise on youth consultations can also be an addition to already planned workshops on specific advocacy processes (UPR, HRC, CEDAW, CSW,CPD) that are hosted by any of the other partners 

What tools are available? 

Hard-copy and soft copy version of the toolkit: Making Each Voice Count! A toolkit for young people running consultations. Toolkit: Making each voice count – Right Here Right Now 

What languages can this CS support be provided in? 

English and French.