Youth voice is a game-Changer.

The Youth Voice Playbook is a free resource collaboratively produced by three organizations: the Center for Digital Thriving, Hopelab, and Character Lab. We created it because we want to help build a future where all young people can thrive – and to make that happen, we know young people’s voices need to be heard, their experiences understood, and their ideas elevated. We also know that a lot of people who share this core belief aren’t sure where to start or how to meaningfully build youth advisory into their work. If you’re one of them, consider this Playbook your all-in-one guide to everything from planning and recruitment to our favorite activities for exploring young people’s perspectives and then making sense of what you’ve learned. The Playbook shares usable resources, honest insights, and real stories. It’s designed to help, and packed with information that we wish someone had shared with us as we all started engaging youth in our own workstreams.

Among the many benefits of bringing youth voices to the fore:

Who This Playbook is For:

The short answer is anyone who is doing research that impacts youth!* This might be traditional academic research, user research, or research & development work. Regardless of the type of research you’re doing, we hold a fundamental belief that youth should be involved in research about the issues that impact them – and that the work is stronger when young people shape it. In the words of many other movement leaders, “Nothing about us without us!”

Why create a playbook now?

“Youth voice” is trending. On the one hand, this is amazing! But on the other hand, we know that doing this authentically and well takes a lot of work. Youth participatory methods are an important way to amplify youth voice and agency in matters that impact them (United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989), but also require facilitators to create conditions that allow for genuine learning, empowerment, and input. This playbook is here to help you do just that.

A note from the authors:

We hope that this playbook can provide inspiration, food for thought, and some practical guidance for researchers, non-profit leaders, funders, program staff, and anyone else who knows that they have much to learn and gain from working more closely with young people.

Some parts of this playbook, especially chapters 2 and 3, might feel daunting. That’s ok! It’s true that doing research with minors involves a number of complexities that often scare people off. We’re here to walk you through those complexities and share all the tips and lessons we’ve learned along the way. Also, you should know that there are organizations that exist to help facilitate the tricky parts of this process for you, so you can focus less on logistics and more on research. We’ll share some of those examples throughout this playbook.

Youth voice has been critical to our own work. Young people’s perspectives have helped us realize who we were unintentionally excluding, when we were missing the mark, and when we weren’t thinking deeply or complexly enough about an issue. Engaging with youth voices has helped us see totally new ideas, stay nimble and creative, and develop the skill of working intergenerationally. It’s also been a good reminder to take ourselves less seriously. We hope you’ll join us in this approach of partnering meaningfully with young people to do research – we really think it’s worth it.

In their Words:

Thanks for checking out this playbook! We’d be remiss to not share a few quotes from some students in the CLIP program who reviewed this playbook:

We hope that these sentiments also ring true for you – that as you explore this model of doing research in your organization, you’ll find this playbook to be an enjoyable and positive companion. We believe that youth voice should be taken seriously, prioritized, and invested in, and we wish you all the best on your journey of collaboration with young people! May it bring you as much insight, growth, and joy as it’s brought us.