We wanted to create an opportunity for a conversation with youth about the future. According to research done by the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights conducted across junior high schools (2016-2017), as well as by IPSOS on behalf of OKO.press in 2019, young people remain passive civically and politically, while conversations about the climate crisis are often perceived as exaggerations of the current situation. That trend is particularly visible among young people from rural areas, and that’s why they were the target group for our project. At the same time, the research from the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights shows that young people are often hostile towards migrants who begin to arrive in Poland at an increasing pace due to the progressing climate change.
Living in the proximity of migrants in a rapidly changing environment will be, according to many scientists, a future many of us will experience. We have engaged young members of Wielkopolska Voivodeship into thinking about the future. We have equipped them with knowledge and tools for a collaborative conversation about challenges we might soon face: climate catastrophe and increasing migrant movements.
Together with four youth groups from Wielkopolska’s municipalities, we have worked on mini-projects responding to local ecological and migration problems. Each group took part in a series of workshops. Based on the diagnosis the groups have arrived at, they proposed actions for their respective municipalities and helped to implement them. The entire process was coordinated by a group of animators and in a close collaboration with experienced educators and trainers. A lot of emphasis was placed on independence and creativity of the young people. Participants in the project took part in an integration retreat and worked on developing tools for debating with their peers. Next, they have conducted workshops on talking and debating about the future for eight youth groups from across the voivodeship. Based on our observations of the designing process and interviews with our participants we have written a report on how young people think about the future and their sense of agency can be bolstered through collaborative process.
Young people also had an opportunity to develop their conversational skills and our evaluation interviews showed that their participation in the project helped increase their sense of agency, as well as knowledge about migrants residing in their area and community.