Young voices draw up blueprint for effective and meaningful co-production

• Name Involving Young People Collective

• Provider Esmée Fairbairn Foundation

After 18 months of research, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation's Involving Young People Collective (IYPC) has developed a set of values for co-production, to provide guidance for organisations looking to involve young people in their decision-making processes.

The values are a working document, but at present they include accessibility, transparency and trust, and measuring and tracking progress, among others.

These were developed in consultation with other organisations, including the Blagrave Trust, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Roundhouse, and UK Student Climate Network.

The IYPC is a group of young people passionate about social change, who contribute to the foundation's funding process, strategic priorities, and challenging it to embed a youth perspective across its work in social action.

Young Person's View
By Betty Mayo, member of the IYPC

I have been part of the IYPC since it began in 2020, and I led the development of the Involving Young People values alongside my colleague Thalia Papanicolaou.

We wanted to compile what we learned about best practice for co-production into a format that is easy to digest and share across the sector. There is already a wealth of literature out there on co-production of young people and organisations, but we had never come across literature that was produced by young people themselves.

Many organisations have successful co-production programmes, which we wanted to incorporate into our values, and held a roundtable conversation with some representatives to dive deeper into the successes and challenges of co-production.

The values will support young people in the future, since they provide a starting point to inspire an organisation thinking about co-producing with young people or to evaluate pre-existing programmes.

These values can be used across all sectors and co-production programmes to ensure they are fulfilling and nourishing for both participants and organisations.

We will be using evidence-based reporting to monitor the success of the values within the foundation, using our satisfaction survey, which is sent to all IYPC consultants and Esmée staff twice a year. This will feature questions that relate to each value to monitor how participants feel the values are being met, and what can be improved.

Other practitioners can use the same method of evaluation, and the IYPC will soon offer consultancy to organisations that want support in setting up co-production with young people, or with measuring impact of pre-existing programmes.

Developing these values is just one aspect of our work at the collective. We also feed into the foundation's investment strategy, hold events on diversifying the environmental sector, and frequently support funding managers with grant assessments.

We gain so much from our roles in the IYPC. Some of these skills include project management, facilitation, research, event planning and organising.

Many members of the IYPC have previous experience of co-production with other organisations which weren't always positive, and some of us felt like our opinions weren't truly valued before. Therefore, the IYPC feels like a unique working relationship for us, because we shaped our roles from the very beginning and it doesn't feel tokenistic.

Funder View
By Caroline Mason, chief executive, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation

Three years ago, we decided it was critical to include young people in the development of our strategy. The result was something that we call the Involving Young People Collective. And it was one of the best decisions we have ever made.

These young people have transformed the way that we think and the way that we operate, and we're speaking to them now about what the future might hold.

Young people will bear the consequences of decisions that we make, so it is essential that they are seen and heard, and central to decisions for the future. We all need the fresh energy, the commitment, the professionalism, and the sheer exuberance that young people bring.