Following the ‘Changing Tides and Making Waves: Youth Participation Leading Positive Change Across the North Sea’ conference which took place towards the end of last year, organisers have shared a report demonstrating the power of youth engagement. View the conference report.

Northern Alliance community learning and development (CLD) colleagues joined up with the CPMR North Sea Commission to host the international virtual youth conference for young people across the North Sea in November.

Sue Briggs, who is leading work to support CLD colleagues to collaborate across the eight local authorities played a lead role in organising the event. She said: “This was such a good piece of work and has created a superb platform for further development around out Priority 2 in the Northern Alliance Plan. We have valuable collaborating partners in the North Sea Commission going forward and are likely to have young people attending their Conference in Rotterdam again this November.”

The CPMR North Sea Commission is a cooperation platform for regions around the North Sea and employed Scotland based Esme Leitch as their Youth Advisor last year following a youth conference in Norway in 2019. The inspiration for the Changing Tides conference came from the work started by the Northern Alliance at their youth conference in Inverness 2018 and the continued work by the North Sea Commission to develop a permanent strategy for youth participation.

The focus continues to be on strengthening youth voice on topics including climate activism, social media and rights.

Esme said: “Involving young people in decision making is not only the right thing to do but has so many benefits for everyone involved. It has been fantastic working with the North Sea Commission on their youth participation initiative and joining up with Northern Alliance on the virtual conference.”