Youth Matters

Youth Matters: A Step-by-Step Booklet for Building a Strong Youth Council

Youth councils enable young people to better understand democracy and take an active part in it. Unfortunately, many cities do not have a long tradition in this area and may even struggle to create and operate a youth council. Therefore, the Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs (Bufdir) and the Association of Local and Regional Authorities (KS) decided to jointly organize a workshop for young counsellors and, from this, to create a brochure for an almost “turnkey” youth council.
The youth councils of Karasjok, Alta and Hammerfest came together in the summer of 2022 to learn more about how to organize effectively, train their recruits and participate more actively in local governments.
The organisers felt it was important to exchange their different experiences so as not to have to start from scratch. Bufdir decided to focus on the participation of young people in public affairs because this is enshrined in the rights of the child and Article 104 of the Norwegian Constitution.

Don’t neglect young people
The workshop received the approval of Karasjok Deputy Mayor John Nystad. He emphasizes the importance of having a youth council in his municipality and hopes to cooperate more with young people in his municipality in the future. Mr Nystad believes that for young people’s wishes to become reality, local politicians must fully support them. The main thing is not to neglect issues that concern young people, he thinks.
During the workshop, the youth councillors shared their knowledge and exchanged advice on how to run a youth council. They advised speaking up more, contacting public administrators, following the calendar of political meetings in their municipality, and cooperating with “adult” politicians.
They also reminded us not to forget diversity and representativeness when it comes to recruiting new committed members. As Deputy Mayor Nystad said, everyone has the right to express themselves. Therefore, raising issues cooperatively with other residents keeps everyone better satisfied.

We never stop learning

Henriette Alexandra Mielonen, a member of the newly established youth council in Karasjok, expressed her satisfaction with the workshop: “It was informative.” She acknowledges that they didn’t know much about running a board before, but meeting more experienced members from other organisations helped them enormously.
“It’s always helpful to understand how others approach work,” she says; it was the old Alta council that gave them a lot of ideas. “We didn’t know we could contact the media if we were unhappy,” she adds.
But as Ms Mielonen reminds us, we never stop learning. This is why the Association of Local and Regional Authorities (KS) has produced a new brochure summarizing the learnings from the workshop. They think this brochure could help other youth councils and make their experience easier.

The brochure is available in Norwegian and English.