What happens when you fill a room with CEOs and young people?
Future Forum: a consortium to bring organisations such as Groundwork UK, Students Organising for Sustainability (SOS-UK) and the #iWill Movement, across the green sector and beyond, together to tackle the barriers to youth voice and leadership within this space. The day started by exercising democracy to elect the new co-chairs of the forum, to safeguard its future before looking at society as a whole.
Post-election priorities, youth voice and leadership and a youth voice audit were the three strands of conversations throughout the day between Forum Ambassadors and Chief Executives.
With the recent general election, young people are keen to ensure the new government tackles and sets green policies as a priority, scrutinising them and ensuring the commitments promised in the manifesto translate into action without being compromised and dropping off as a priority on the national agenda.
Young people should have their say in the decisions that would impact us the most - both within organisational frameworks and in policy. Conversations followed tangible commitments to share best practice across the forum and ensure there's a clear roadmap to progress - which followed into the framing of an audit by youth representatives, scrutinising governance structures in organisations to see whether their models are fit for purpose in engaging young people in a meaningful way.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion wrapped up the conversations of the day; acknowledging the key barriers to disengagement from certain demographics - and how they could be involved to provide diversity of thought to the movement, mirroring the conversations held recently at the RACE summit on accessibility and youth inclusion.
Written by Sami Gichki, Co-Chair of the #iWill Movement and #iWill Representative on the Future Forum.