Youth Lab’s dialogues and policy conversations are platforms for frank and productive interactions that are facilitated between youth and key stakeholders.
How we Engage
Policy Labs
Youth Lab’s strength and authenticity lies in our regular and robust engagemt with young South Africans all over the country. Through our various platforms, we provide a safe space for young South Africans to ventlate the issues that affect them and critique the policies that impact their daily lives. We also use our position as an established youth organisation to bring young people together with stakeholders like political leaders, industry titans and researchers to engage on policy and governance issues to shape South Africa.
Policy Conversations
Our Policy Conversations, in partnership with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation South Africa, encourage young people to express their opinions, and challenge ideas about the hurdles facing young South Africans.
Young Feminist Roundtable
Since 2016 Youth Lab has hosted an annual Feminist Roundtable on Environmental Justice to create a platform for young women who are activist and academics to come together to sharpen their understanding about the intersections between gender and environmental justice. The question of gender in issues related to the environment is an extremely pertinent one, because, globally, women (especially poor women) tend to be among the most marginalised groups in both policy and practice. In the past this forum has focused on energy and climate change as issues that require a gender lens.
This year, in Durban, we are focusing on the land question, asking how we can ensure a gender sensitive approach to an issue that has become potentially game-changing in our country’s political and developmental context. How do young women enter this debate? What are the ways in which the discourse and policy debates need to be gendered?
What are the types of activism and lobbying that can be embarked on to ensure that women are not left behind? These are other core questions that will be addressed to ensure that our feminism becomes practical in influencing the hotly contested land debate in South Africa. Youth Lab is hosts its Annual Young Feminist Roundtable on Land, inviting young women working on gender justice and those working on land and agriculture solutions to discuss the intersections between feminism and the land debates in South Africa.
The invitation is extended to young women aged 18-35, who are interested in being part of a shared learning and collaboration building workshop. We are looking for young women entrepreneurs, activists, academics and in public service to make this workshop an opportunity to rethink the ways that the agenda for land justice can be tackled through a gender sensitive lens.
