Beyond the “Too Young” Narrative
When you hear the words “young people,” what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
For me, after years of working alongside hundreds of young people from different countries, backgrounds, and disciplines, the answer is immediate: dedication, resilience, ambition, creativity, idealism in the best sense of the word, and a genuine desire to contribute to something larger than themselves. I think of young people who work tirelessly after classes and jobs to organise projects, conduct research, build communities, advocate for change, and create spaces they themselves once lacked. I think of curiosity, energy, and the courage to question systems many others have accepted as immovable.
Yet not everyone sees youth this way.
For many, the word “young” still carries assumptions of inexperience, unreliability, naivety, or irrelevance. Young people are often perceived as “not ready yet,” “too idealistic,” or insufficiently qualified to participate meaningfully in policymaking, research, or institutional life. In many spaces, their ideas are tolerated rather than truly considered.
From my personal experience, however, this perception could not be further from reality.
What often prevents young people from contributing meaningfully is not a lack of capability, but a lack of access, trust, and opportunity. Many young people possess extraordinary insight into the realities shaping their generation, bringing lived experiences, digital fluency, adaptability, interdisciplinary thinking, and new forms of communication that traditional institutions still struggle to fully understand. Yet because they frequently lack established networks, institutional credibility, or access to influential platforms, their perspectives are too often dismissed before they are even heard.
When societies fail to create meaningful pathways for youth participation, they lose enormous reservoirs of talent, innovation, and civic energy. Entire generations become spectators to systems they should instead help shape.
Fortunately, this dynamic has begun to shift, at least to some extent.
Building spaces instead of waiting for permission
Over the past decade, we have witnessed the growing emergence and strengthening of youth-led organisations, associations, advocacy groups, and think tanks that are gradually carving out a legitimate space within the broader landscape of research, policy, and social action. Young people are no longer waiting passively to be invited into existing structures; increasingly, they are building their own.
And this raises another important question:
What comes to your mind when you hear the phrase “a youth-led think tank”?
For some, the answer may still be scepticism. The term can evoke the image of a symbolic initiative, a kind of simulation of “real” policymaking or research, existing primarily to give young people the feeling of participation without actual influence. Within this mindset, youth-led organisations are often perceived as temporary training grounds rather than serious contributors to public debate and institutional change.
But this perception fundamentally misunderstands the value such organisations can bring.
More than symbolic participation
To me, a youth-led think tank represents something profoundly important: the possibility of producing knowledge informed directly by the experiences, concerns, and aspirations of younger generations themselves. It represents spaces where policy discussions are not detached from the realities young people navigate daily, but shaped from within those realities.
Youth-led organisations often possess a unique ability to recognise emerging societal shifts early, particularly in areas such as digital communication, online misinformation, mental health, civic disengagement, technological transformation, and changing forms of political participation.
They experiment with new forms of participation, collaboration, and knowledge production while also serving as accessible entry points into policymaking and civic engagement for individuals who might otherwise never imagine themselves capable of entering such spaces. They are not simply “junior versions” of established think tanks or NGOs.
At the same time, youth-led organisations should not operate in isolation from one another. Stronger coordination between youth-led think tanks, grassroots organisations, student associations, advocacy groups, and community initiatives could significantly strengthen the collective impact of youth participation.
Building stronger ecosystems of cooperation among youth-led actors would not only improve sustainability and knowledge sharing but also help create more inclusive and representative forms of youth participation across sectors, regions, and lived realities.
Ultimately, meaningful youth empowerment requires more than symbolic inclusion. It requires creating structures in which young people are genuinely trusted as capable contributors to policymaking, research, and civic life.
What empowerment looks like in practice
When discussing what this can look like in practice, I naturally think of the experience of the European Student Think Tank and the approach we have tried to develop over the years.
At the core of our work lies what we often describe as a “for youth, by youth” approach. This means that our activities are directly informed by the experiences, concerns, aspirations, and insights of the students and young professionals actively involved in the organisation. Rather than designing initiatives for young people from a distance, we build them together with those who experience these realities firsthand.
In practice, this approach contributes to youth empowerment on multiple levels.
First, we empower the young people who volunteer within the organisation itself. Beyond theoretical learning opportunities, we place a strong emphasis on experiential, hands-on engagement. By continuously developing increasingly ambitious initiatives, we create environments in which students and young professionals are trusted with real responsibilities and opportunities to contribute meaningfully.
Whether through drafting research briefs and policy papers, organising international conferences, moderating discussions or coordinating long-term projects, our members often develop professional and interpersonal competencies at an extraordinary pace.
Second, we empower the participants who engage with our activities by demonstrating that ambitious ideas are not reserved exclusively for established institutions or senior professionals. Over the years, we have had the privilege of collaborating with UN agencies, organising events at the European Parliament and within UN spaces, and building partnerships with organisations across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. For many participants, seeing young people successfully coordinate initiatives of this scale fundamentally transforms their perception of what is possible. Very often, after participating in one of our events or projects, individuals reach out wanting to become involved themselves.
Third, youth-led organisations can profoundly reshape how external stakeholders perceive young actors more broadly. Through professionalism, dedication, reliability, creativity, and innovative thinking, organisations like ours can challenge deeply rooted assumptions about youth participation.
When trust replaces gatekeeping
At the same time, none of this would be possible without meaningful intergenerational collaboration.
One of the aspects for which I feel the greatest gratitude is the willingness of experienced experts, academics, practitioners, and policymakers to engage openly and generously with youth-led initiatives. The individuals who dedicate their time to mentoring, advising, guiding, and collaborating with younger generations play an immeasurably important role.
Within the European Student Tank, this dynamic is especially embodied by our Expert Advisory Board, whose mentorship and encouragement continue to shape not only our work but also the confidence and aspirations of countless young people within the organisation.
Taken together, these elements form the broader philosophy through which we approach youth empowerment: not as symbolic inclusion but as the creation of environments in which young people can genuinely develop, contribute, experiment, collaborate, and grow.
Why these spaces ultimately matter
This is precisely why youth-led organisations like ours matter so deeply: they create spaces where curiosity and ambition are nurtured rather than dismissed, and where young people are recognised not merely as future changemakers, but as capable contributors already today.
Yet if this vision of youth empowerment is truly to become reality, if we genuinely believe that youth-led organisations matter, then we must also ask more difficult questions:
- Why do so many of these organisations struggle to survive, grow, and sustain their impact?
- And perhaps even more importantly: what would it take to build systems that allow them not merely to exist symbolically, but to thrive?
These are precisely the questions I would like to explore in the second part of this reflection.