The Challenge
There are around 1.5 billion young people in the world today
40% of the population is under 24 years of age
UNICEF and Wellcome are united behind the idea that young people deserve to have a say in the big issues that are shaping the world: the decisions made today will be the consequences they face tomorrow.
Together they are supporting a global participatory research project exploring how to increase young people’s involvement in shaping solutions for global challenges.
Our response
Shift’s research team
- Leading the UK based research work
- Working with Beatfreaks, the youth engagement and insight agency
- Surfacing the factors that encourage young people and science research to engage one another
- Building a team of young co-leads aged 13-25 to design this participatory research with us
- Undertalking research primarily through social networks.
Shift’s creative team
- Designing up and socialising the research findings from across the global programme
- Targeting people working in health, science, development and humanitarian programming who could better involve young people in their research, policy making and practice.
- Working with a team of young creatives from around the world aged 13-25
- Created an identity for the programme and an online hub (futureweavers.org).
- Publishing insights from large-scale participatory research work – including youth-led community radio, news broadcasting and social media research
- Research activity happening in 12 countries across West Africa, East and Southern Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and the UK.
Research

A bigger role for young people in health & science research
January 26, 2022
Young authors explore how they can play a bigger role in health and science research. Supported by Wellcome and Beatfreeks.
Comment
Young co-leads share insights from shaping a peer-led research project
What are the benefits of young people running a research project? What are the challenges of taking a participatory approach? …