Youth engagement

Changing the Story was driven by a belief that, for social change to be truly transformational, young people must be central to making the decisions that affect them. We supported this vision by creating as many high-quality opportunities as possible for young people to develop their skills, confidence and experiences, so that they feel equipped as young changemakers to tackle the challenges ahead.

Changing the Story and our global community worked with children and young people from all walks of life. As a global practice-research network it included 38 universities in 17 countries, students have inevitably been part of CTS’ fabric from the start. A few examples of this collaborative activity include:

• • In Kosovo our project has worked in collaboration with Erasmus + to bring together students from the University of Pristina and Bournemouth University to explore cross-community peacebuilding.
  • In South Africa, two young artists from the University of Cape Town organised a symposium alongside a youth subcommittee on the ImaginingOtherwise research project.
  • In Colombia, four social work students from Universidad Claretiana were trained on project aspects of monitoring and evaluation and systematization of data to support Cuál es la verdad? research activities.

Student engagement
What was unique about the student engagement programmes that run across our network was an understanding that the students involved are so much more than students; they are activists, artists, youth leaders, NGO founders, researchers and community members who have often had first-hand experience of the issues and solutions that we are trying to understand and uncover.

This recognition of the multi-dimensionality of what makes up a ‘young person’ means that, through our programmes, we could challenge the traditional student-researcher relationship and, as a result, co-create new spaces for young people to shape the narratives which define them, both within our own projects and beyond.

Youth Research Board
The Youth Research Board is a group of eleven young researchers from Colombia, Venezuela, Rwanda, South Africa, Kosovo, Nepal and India. The role of the research board was to evaluate the overall Changing the Story project and to identify what they see as the key issues emerging from the projects.

Using the archive

You can use the search box or click the links in the author, categories or tags fields to immediately filter the content, (this can be repeated multiple times). Select the link in the title column to see more information about that resource including the ability to watch, preview and download the content. See below for a selection of resources from the archive highlighting material relating to the Youth Research Board and the Young Changemakers.