From youth voice to youth power: Why who is in the room matters
Why bringing young people, delivery organisations and funders together is essential for the future of youth social action.
By Yusuf Shobair, Member of The Co-Design and Planning Group for the September 2026 #iwill Learning & Legacy Event
When we talk about youth social action, it is easy to focus on what young people do: the campaigns young people lead, the communities we support, the projects we create and the change we want to see. But there is another question that is just as important: who has the power to decide what happens next?
I was involved in the co-design and planning of the recent #iwill Learning & Legacy event, which brought together young people, funders, delivery organisations, researchers and decision-makers to reflect on learning from the #iwill Fund evaluation and consider its legacy. Although I was not able to attend the event itself, being part of the planning process gave me an opportunity to think carefully about what meaningful youth involvement should look like, particularly when the people in the room hold very different levels of power.
For me, one of the strongest messages from the work was that bringing these groups together matters because young people should not simply be consulted about systems that have already been designed for us. We should have opportunities to help shape those systems.
From being heard to having influence
There is a difference between youth voice and youth power.
Youth voice can mean being asked for an opinion, completing a survey, joining a focus group or speaking at an event. These opportunities can be valuable, but they become limited if nothing changes afterwards.
Youth power asks a different question: what happens because young people were involved?
That could mean young people helping to design funding programmes, having meaningful roles in governance, influencing how resources are distributed or being involved in implementation and decision-making. It also means being honest about where power sits and what adults and institutions are prepared to share.
This is why bringing funders and decision-makers into the same space as young people is so important. It creates an opportunity for conversations to move beyond simply understanding young people's experiences towards considering what those with structural power can actually do differently.
Creating the conditions for participation
One thing I have increasingly recognised through youth participation work is that young people are not necessarily "hard to reach". Sometimes the systems around young people are hard to access.
A young person may care deeply about their community but not know where to start. They may lack confidence, transport, digital access, trusted adults or the time and resources needed to participate. They may have additional needs that organisations have not properly understood or accommodated.
If we want youth social action to be genuinely inclusive, participation cannot depend on already having the confidence, connections or knowledge to find your way into the room.
That means investing in trusted adults, schools, community organisations and local infrastructure. It means considering practical barriers such as travel costs and accessibility. It means creating different routes into participation rather than repeatedly asking the same confident young people to represent an entire generation.
It also means investing beyond short-term projects.
Young people and organisations need the stability to build relationships, develop skills and allow ideas to grow. Funding that only supports short pilots can make it difficult to establish the infrastructure and trust needed for sustainable youth leadership. As one message from the event captured particularly well, we should think about perennials, not annuals.
Who gets the opportunity to lead?
There is also a responsibility to think about representation differently.
If the same people are repeatedly invited into youth participation spaces, we risk confusing visibility with representation. A young person being present does not automatically mean that the process is inclusive.
We need to reach young people in different places, through different routes and with different experiences. Schools, community organisations and trusted adults can all play an important role. So can accessible and creative approaches that allow young people to contribute in ways that work for them.
This is particularly important when thinking about young people who are less likely to have access to established networks or opportunities.
The answer should not simply be to find a more diverse group of young people and put them into existing structures. We also need to ask whether those structures themselves are accessible, welcoming and capable of sharing power.
What should happen next?
For me, the value of an event like this is not ultimately measured by how good the conversations were on the day. It is measured by what happens afterwards. Do funders change how they design programmes? Do organisations create genuine pathways for young people into leadership and governance? Are young people involved in implementation as well as consultation? Does investment reach places and communities that have historically been overlooked? Do organisations continue to listen when the answer is difficult or inconvenient?
These questions matter because youth social action is not simply a "nice to have". Young people have knowledge, skills, ideas and lived experience that can strengthen communities and influence better decisions. But participation needs the right conditions around it.
If we genuinely want youth social action to thrive, we need to move from asking "How can we hear more young people's voices?" to asking "How can we create the conditions for young people to exercise meaningful power?"
That requires young people, delivery organisations, funders and decision-makers to be in the room together. More importantly, it requires those with power to be willing to listen, reflect and act.
The invitation, then, is not simply to give young people a seat at the table. It is to ask what they are able to do once they get there.