I have spent the last few months asking young people a simple question. A question that I have in the last 2 months asked over 1000 young people;
“What is one issue shaping your life right now?”

The answers always come quickly. Cost of living. Housing. Climate anxiety. Mental health. Safety. 

But what continues to stay with me isn’t just what they say. It was what always inevitably comes next.

When I ask, “Do you think decision-makers are paying attention to this?”
Most of them said no. Sometimes it is hesitation. Sometimes it is frustrating. Sometimes it is just a quiet, very certain no.

We often discuss youth engagement as if getting young people to care is the real challenge. But that is not what I am seeing. Young people already care, but what we need to be asking is, why aren’t our systems built to respond to that? Why, despite all this effort, does youth input still so rarely translate into policy outcomes?

Activation – Mobilisation – Influence

So how do we move from that moment – from caring, to action, to real influence? I think about this in three stages: Activation. Mobilisation. And influence.

Activation

It starts with activation.

Activation is about what turns care into engagement. It is about what makes young people not just aware of an issue, but willing to respond to it. And in almost every conversation I have had with young people, activation comes down to three things.

First, relevance. Young people act when issues are not abstract, but directly connected to their lives. Things like the cost of living, climate change, housing, inequality, education, and mental health are not distant policy topics. They are lived realities. They shape what young people feel day to day, and what they imagine for their futures.

Second, identity and belonging are key. Young people are far more likely to engage when they see themselves reflected in an issue, or when they feel part of a community that is responding to it. Engagement is not just intellectual, it is relational. People act when they feel that they belong in the space where action is happening.

Third, clarity. Young people do not need more motivation to care. They need clarity about what is happening, why it matters, and what can be done about it. When that clarity exists, engagement follows.

Mobilisation

Once young people are activated, the next step is mobilisation.

Mobilisation is what happens when individual concern becomes collective action. This is where young people stop acting alone and start acting together.

To me, mobilisation is especially significant in the times we are living in now. The world is a stressful place – international conflicts, climate change, all of these challenges from a local to national and international level. Young people have shared that they do not have hope for their future. Not because they don’t see a future, but because they feel as though the odds are stacked against them and everything is overwhelming right now. This makes it easy to then feel helpless, apathetic and completely disengage from changemaking. 

However, this is where mobilisation is pivotal.

And we already see this occurring in positive ways. Through school-based initiatives, grassroots campaigns, digital communities, youth organisations, and informal peer networks, young people are constantly organising around issues that matter to them.

One of the most powerful drivers of mobilisation is peer influence. Young people mobilise young people. Not through top-down instruction, but through connection, trust, and shared experience.

This is also where tools matter. Storytelling becomes a form of organising. Social media becomes a platform for coordination. Community spaces become sites of strategy and support. Even informal conversations become part of how movements form and grow.

Importantly, mobilisation is not the same as activation. Activation is individual. Mobilisation is collective.

Activation is about “I care about this.”

Mobilisation is about “we are doing something about this together.”

Influence

Influence is where mobilisation connects to power. It is where youth action does not just exist in parallel to systems, but actually enters them and shapes them. And this is where we need to be honest about something important.

Most young people are not unclear about how decisions are made. They are excluded from how decisions are made. Policy processes often feel distant, complex, or inaccessible. And even when young people do engage through consultations, advisory groups, advocacy, or community leadership, the link between input and outcome is often unclear.

Young people can be highly active, highly engaged, and highly organised, but still not see their influence reflected in policy. So the question becomes not just how do we involve young people, but where do they actually plug in.

Where are the real pathways from youth action into decision-making structures? And how transparent are those pathways when they exist? Because influence is not just about being invited into a room. It is about whether what is said in that room actually changes what happens outside it.

I have spoken to over 1000 young people throughout my listening tour so far and have heard time and time again from young people that they are frustrated about not being taken seriously in decision-making. 

 

Key Gaps

When we look across all of this, there are some clear gaps and tensions that keep appearing.

The first is that participation is not the same as power. Young people are often invited into spaces to share their views, but that does not automatically mean those views shape decisions. There is a difference between being asked what you think, and having what you think actually matters in the final outcome.

The second is that access does not equal inclusion. Many systems have created more entry points for youth engagement, consultations, advisory groups, forums, and surveys. But access on its own is not enough if there is no clear pathway from input to influence. Being able to speak is not the same as being heard in a way that changes decisions.

The third tension is that young people are already leading. Across communities, schools, and digital spaces, young people are not waiting for permission to act. They are already identifying issues, building responses, and creating solutions. The gap is not capacity. The gap is recognition and connection to decision-making systems.

And so what this requires is not just participation for participation’s sake. It requires a deeper analysis of how youth engagement connects to power, influence, and outcomes – at the moment, we are often measuring engagement, but not measuring impact.

 

Action

A lot of this conversation focuses on systems, but systems do not change on their own. They change through people, and through how we choose to act within them. They change through people. Through action. And through how individuals choose to show up within the spaces they already have access to.

There are a few low-barrier but high-impact actions that matter here.

1. The first is speaking up in the spaces that already exist. Whether that is school forums, community meetings, advisory boards, or local decision-making spaces, showing up and consistently raising youth perspectives creates visibility. And visibility creates pressure for response.
2. The second is using storytelling as a form of influence. Not just stating opinions, but sharing lived experience in a way that connects issues to real human impact. Policy often responds more strongly to narrative than abstract data alone. When young people share what is happening in their lives, it shifts issues from theoretical to urgent.
3. The third is raising issues publicly where appropriate. This does not mean every issue needs to be amplified in public spaces, but it does mean recognising that visibility is a form of influence. When issues are seen, they are harder to ignore. If you are finding something challenging, the chances are that you are NOT alone in that experience.
4. And the fourth is recognising the power of collective action. Young people do not just need to act individually. In fact, some of the strongest impact comes when they do not. Organising with others who care about the same issue turns individual concern into shared momentum. It shows that an issue is not isolated, but systemic.

 

Summary

As young people, you are not “future leaders” waiting for your turn. You are already shaping conversations, already identifying gaps, already pushing systems to be better than they are.

And that matters more than it is often recognised.

Because change does not start when someone gives you permission. It starts when you realise your perspective already has value.

As Senator Pat Dodson has said, young people are the ones who will carry us forward.

And maybe the more important question is not just what we are asking you to carry, but whether we are willing to build a world that actually listens to you while you are already building it.

 

This blog post is an adapted version of a speaker session delivered at the Future Action Summit by the 2026 Australian Youth Representative to the United Nations, Janice Rodrigues. We extend our thanks to the following volunteers for their contributions:

• Grace Harkins (Chief Youth Representation Officer)
• Paris Rumanni (Impact Intern)
• Genevieve Leong (Impact Intern)
• Noa Pitt (Impact Intern)