The ACT Alliance assembly is getting closer and we in Youth Participation Community of Practice have been working hard for the assembly to be as great as possible. We have managed to get 30 youth delegates from all over the world to participate and we are very excited for the pre-meeting and the assembly. As there are only weeks before the assembly starts, lots of preparations have already been made. Nevertheless, we still have some things to work on.

One of the things we are still working on is our member conversation, which will take place on Tuesday, the 30th of October. The title of member conversation will be ”Youth Participation – How can ACT make a step change in enabling youth participation across the work of the alliance?” We hope that the conversation will bring up thoughts about the strengths and challenges of youth work in ACT and how could we develop youth participation in ACT in the future. We are still perfecting the planning of the member conversation by coming up with some more specific questions for the panelists, so the outcome of the conversation will be as fruitful as possible.

Another big thing we have been working on is the youth pre-meeting, which takes place on the 26th and 27th of October, before the start of the assembly. We have been preparing activities for the pre-meeting together with Church of Sweden and are still finalising the program. As the pre-meeting is a place for the youth delegates to work together, the program will include discussing the Youth CoP and the role of youth in ACT Alliance, but it will also include getting to know each other and sharing experiences.

Youth CoP’s goal is to make sure that young people have their voices heard in ACT Alliance. This is naturally also our aspiration for the assembly. We hope to make youth participation an imporant and visible part of ACT Alliance’s work and to include youth in everything that ACT works with.

Since people under 30 make up almost half of the world’s population today, we find it natural that youth should also be a visible and a powerful actor in global decision-making. Young people have huge potential and it is important to give them a platform to use that potential, and to enable and encourage them to participate in ACT’s work in all of its different ways.

The ACT Assembly is one of the places where youth can discuss together what are the strengths of our current work, and what should we focus on in the future. We believe that the assembly will be very productive and fruitful, and produce great ideas for our upcoming work!