Empowering youth workers and youth to promote fair trade through new forms of activism

The project was formed in the context of civic activism taking on new forms, especially in terms of how young people commit to different causes and participate in civic action. Youth participation is increasingly one-off activism, for example, through signing online petitions, or self-organisatory activities. The project focused on involving young people in transformative civic participation around fair global trade - a topic that is shared among young people across Europe through global brands and consumer goods and commercial messages. The first objective of the project was to strengthen the capacity of the organisations involved to allow them to engage youth in an inclusive manner in an era of new activism. The second objective of the project was to increase the capabilities of young people to a) critically evaluate the commercial messages they are confronted with and to decipher the production chain of their everyday consumer goods and b) to be empowered to influence the way global production takes place in the world today, both through policy reform and through influencing companies directly. In the project, a group of 24 young people aged 18-25 from Finland, Estonia and Latvia were chosen to learn civic participation skills and co-design the transnational meetings that were the key activity in the project. Three transnational meetings were planned and organised together with the youth. The youth experienced hands-on activities and learnt from external speakers on themes related to responsible consumption and fair global trade. In between national meetings, the partner organisations supported initiatives and activities planned and implemented by the youth to put into practice the skills they had acquired.