Youth ad-hoc meetings
What are Youth ad-hoc meetings?
Youth ad-hoc meetings are time-bound participatory events that gather young people to discuss, deliberate and exchange views on specific topics, policies, or societal challenges. These formats—such as youth symposiums, forums, conferences, or seminars—serve as platforms for dialogue, collective reflection, and knowledge-sharing.
Key characteristics
Although temporary in nature, they are powerful tools to raise awareness, generate ideas and promote networking among youth, policymakers, and experts. Can be adapted to various contexts, target groups, and formats, including local town halls, national youth forums, or international symposiums. They often act as gateways to longer-term engagement. Some function as consultation tools feeding into broader decision-making processes. Others focus on capacity-building and youth mobilization, without direct policy impact.Different types of Youth ad-hoc meetings
Youth forum/conference
Youth symposiums and seminars
Policy hackathons or youth labs
Do NOT establish this model in case
sustained engagement, long-term planning or structured follow-up is required if the objective is to build consistent relationships between young people and institutions when policy input needs to be deeply integrated into complex decision-making processes you operate in contexts where youth participation is merely symbolic or where >decision-makers are not committed to follow-up actions there are no resources or capacity to meaningfully include a diverse and representative group of young people young participants lack prior knowledge or adequate preparation on the topic.