What moves young people in Germany
2025
What moves young people in Germany
From January to May, the Jugendstiftung coordinated 60 "What Moves You" youth conferences at schools on behalf of the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport. The Jugendstiftung trained committed young people in online courses to become moderators and project managers for the events. Between 50 and 100 young people participated in each youth conference, and they organised and moderated most of the events themselves. The aim is to strengthen youth participation in schools, empower young people, identify development needs on all topics relevant to them and participate in the implementation of goals.
In 2022 and 2023, the project began with six and then 10 pilot locations before the concept was expanded to enable young people to implement the youth conferences independently, encompassing planning, room organisation, press work, moderation, documentation of results, and planning follow-up projects that develop from the outcomes. To this end, the Jugendstiftung provides working materials, including schedules, information on public relations work, place cards, a documentation tool, and videos, and offers online training courses for the young people in charge.
The programme will be further expanded to provide even more support for young people and improve the quality of the youth conferences. Young people are involved in the conceptual development from the outset, as well as in the development of the working materials. A budget of up to 600 euros per youth conference is available to the schools. Following the further development of the concept, demand from both schools and young people has exceeded all expectations. The 40 youth conferences initially planned were fully booked within two weeks, and the programme, which was expanded to 60 at short notice, was fully booked within a further week. The minimum number of participants of 50 young people per youth conference was often far exceeded - some schools organised their youth conferences with 100 or more young people.
In a world café format, the young people worked out their concerns, wishes and demands on topics such as participation, democracy, digitalisation, mental health, mobility and much more. For example, many pupils want more political education in everyday school life, as well as information on fake news, deepfakes, propaganda, and extremism. They also seek more youth information via social media channels and the modernisation of technical equipment in schools, accompanied by qualifications in dealing with AI for teachers and pupils. It is clear that this form of exchange and reflection offers many young people the opportunity to express their concerns publicly for the first time, and these concerns are being clearly named at a time of multidimensional crises following the COVID-19 pandemic and its tangible effects, climate change, wars, and international and national instabilities.
One frequently mentioned demand is for greater attention to be paid to mental health to enable sustainable stress management, anti-bullying strategies and self-esteem development, just to name a few. The results will be further processed in the schools and discussed with high-ranking state politicians at the central state youth conference on 15 July in Stuttgart, where 400 young people are expected to attend, following the 250 young people who attended in 2024.
The plan for the next school year is to expand the format to accommodate up to 150 youth conferences, reaching approximately 10,000 young people annually.
Contact: Günter Bressau, bressau@jugendstiftung.de
