Flipping the script: young people mobilise adults to increase participation in disaster risk reduction

The established practice for increasing young people’s inclusion in disaster risk reduction holds that adults play a vital role in realising young people’s full participation. This involves providing young people with a seat at the table or facilitating their inclusion to ensure their voices are heard. However, when adults are both decision-makers and facilitators of inclusion, the drivers of exclusion often go unaddressed. This paper describes a co-design method used by The Resilient Towns Initiative to improve youth participation in disaster risk reduction. It was devised through working with young people in the New South Wales Snowy Valleys, an area affected by Australia’s summer bushfires in 2019–20. The approach relied on supporting the conditions for young people to increase their participation via cultivating a youth voice, generating ideas, creating a vision, bringing in adults, and building legacy to sustain momentum. Outcomes indicate that this approach nurtured cross-generational relations, raised the profile and esteem of young people and built skills, knowledge and resources. This addressed some structural barriers to inclusion and, more broadly, social inclusion in a regional area.