January 2025

Going global and striking records

Running our first youth conference outside Europe in South Africa in August 2024 was a game changer for us – we thereby started our global endeavor!

In the application rounds to our first five youth conferences in Europe, besides European youth, African youth applied in the biggest numbers. This testimony of the African youth’s strong will to democratize and develop their societies, showed itself with a blazing energy not only in the conference, but even more so in the unprecedented energetic initiatives after the conference. Less than five months after the conference there are a record number with following-up democracy-promoting initiatives by the African Youth Fellows in Botswana, Malawi, Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda.

We achieved another IYTT record during 2024 by Youth Fellows writing no less than four Working Papers on current topics. We published three of the papers in the fall launched in news postings. The fourth is in pipeline and will be published early spring.

Another IYTT record was smacked on July 19 and 20 when four Youth Fellows and I ran OCDTs-Open Chair Democracy Talks with more than 130 passers-by in Gothenburg! Youth Fellows have carried out OCDTs at numerous occasions on five continents, but up till July 2024 we have not come close to voicing so many people in the same place and at the same time!

Thanks to our participation in the Interreg North See/EU project called Speak Up, in 2024 we piloted three-day Summer Camps. This is a new method through which local youth, led by Youth Fellows, evolves policy advise to local leaders, grounded in local inhabitants ideas brought forward through Open Chair Democracy Talks. We are very much looking forward to running several Summer Camps together with the Speak Up partners this summer.

We are taking the next step in our global endeavor on April 14 thru 17 by organizing the 7th IYTT Youth Conference on yet another continent – in the USA, in Washington DC. The conference will be graciously hosted at the McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University. We are utterly grateful for such a generous hosting, and we are very happy that Bertelsmann Foundation and the World Bank Group Youth Summit 2025 are contributing invaluably to the conference program.

People-centrism and personal devotion, whole-hearten focus on hands-on activities, and curiosity in trying out new things whenever an idea pops up, is the IYTT lifeblood. This is how we have realized the amazing potential among so many Youth Fellows, and thus amassed invaluable human capital in the service of democracy. To realize our full potential and lay the foundation for endurance and long-termism, we are now evolving the IYTT into a fundraising foundation.

It is an amazing privilege to evolve the think tank activities together with all amazingly brilliant and good-hearten Youth Fellows, and it certainly gives hope for a much brighter future. A big thanks to all of you!

Speaking of giving thanks, our progression is unthinkable if it hadn’t been for the support from our sponsors the Sten A Olsson Foundation, Interreg North Sea funding the Speak Up project, Region Västra Götaland, our host Lindholmen Science Park, our Advisory Board, and our supportive national and international friends, such as McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University; Athens Democracy Forum; International IDEA; Bertelsmann Foundation; World Bank Group Youth Summit 2025; Innovation in Politics Institute; Norwegian Nobel Institute; Nobel Peace Center; Global Liberal Arts Alliance; FVZS Institute at Stellenbosch University; Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies; Global Democracy Coalition; TAM-Transatlantic Master’s Program; Fourth Way Foundation; World Federation Against Drugs; Bonnier Family Foundation; Mentor, Mitt Liv AB; Mitt Livs Val; and The Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Gothenburg.

With the winter edition of our newsletter The Loop, comes an overview of the IYTT’s recent and upcoming events, activities, and publications. I trust you will enjoy it.

All good things!