Over the past four months, as an expression of solidarity and youth power, the youth power panel have been bringing young people together from all over the world, to connect and share ideas around COVID-19.
The idea is to support young people to meet with others around the world – others they wouldn’t typically have the opportunity to connect with – so they can share ideas and learn from each other and the different ways they are being impacted by or are responding to the pandemic.
Over 2000 people have engaged with the series so far, spanning over 100 countries across Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and Africa.
We have two meetups every month with each meetup focusing on a different topic.
In April, we focused on the impact of COVID-19 in different places around the world and the actions young people were taking in response.
In May, we focused on the inequalities that had been exacerbated by COVID-19 and young people’s ideas for building back better.
In June, in collaboration with HelpAge International, we focused on ageism in COVID-19 and how younger and older people can come together to support each other.
In July, in collaboration with Africans Rising and Black Youth Project 100 we met in solidarity with recent black lives matter protests around the world to discuss the systemic racism that young people face.
We also hosted a meetup on ‘Lessons from Youth Movements: How can young people organise sucessfully?’ where participants discussed youth movements, past and present, and how we can make our organising, empowering, effective and decentralised.
For International Youth Day on Wednesday 12th August, four months on from starting this meetup series , we had another chat about how we are coping and the ways in which young people around the world have been responding to the pandemic.
Coming up:
Follow the organiser on eventbrite and you’ll be notified of our next event.
What are they like?
The meetups are entirely youth led, with each meetup being hosted by different young activists from our youth power panel.
It is intentionally not another webinar series with a panel of experts broadcasting or the same old usual suspects. The approach is participatory and interactive; everyone has an equal chance to speak and share with the group.
Find out what we learnt from our previous meetups:
How to get involved:
Follow the youth power panel on eventbrite to be notified of our next meetup.