Youth delegates/ youth ambassadors
What are Youth delegates/youth ambassadors?
Youth delegates and youth ambassadors are structured participation models in which young people are appointed or elected to represent their peers in institutional, political, or thematic processes at local, national, or international levels. While the terminology may vary, these models share a common focus on representation, communication, and advocacy.
Key characteristics
These roles are generally individual, time-bound, and highly visible to the youth involved and the key stakeholders connected to this mechanism. They offer to a limited number of young people an opportunity to bring youth perspectives into policy dialogues, advocacy platforms and decision-making spaces, despite not usually holding any decision-making power themselves. Youth delegates often serve within formal governance settings, such as national parliaments, international organisations, or advisory bodies. Youth ambassadors, by contrast, tend to represent specific programmes, themes, or campaigns towards external stakeholders, acting as peer communicators, mobilisers, and awareness-raisers. Delegates or ambassadors often act as bridges between young people and institutions, collecting input from peers and feeding it into policy spaces, while also relaying information and opportunities back to their communities.Different types of Youth delegates/ youth ambassadors
Youth Delegates programmes
Youth Ambassadors/Champions programmes
Young Mayor
Do NOT establish this model in case
your intention is to foster collective youth engagement rather than individual representation you would engage delegates to events without the possibility to contribute substantially or follow up on them long-term continuity or organisational learning (especially for shorter-term mandates) is a key for you if there is no intention to provide young people with real access to relevant information and key decision-makers you can not ensure strong institutional support, clear mandates, adequate capacity development and training opportunities