Supporting the YAB also provides an opportunity for the NYEB to build its knowledge on how to partner meaningfully with young people through shared power, leadership, and reflection.
Reflecting on our first year, here are three key things we have learnt about facilitating meaningful youth leadership:
1. When young people own and lead projects, depth of engagement increases.
Youth Advisory structures are often restricted to feedback roles, aimed at commenting on work that has already been designed. We wanted to move beyond basic consultation and toward shared leadership and ownership of both the YAB and the NYEB itself.
The first year of the YAB was deliberately scaffolded to support this leadership, build the YAB members’ transferrable skills, and provide real opportunities for the YAB members to apply those skills to lead and direct the YAB into the future.
This included:
- Focusing early meetings on building trust, safety, and core confidence
- Setting common and individual goals at the inception of the YAB, with check-ins at each subsequent meeting
- Structuring meetings and facilitation in a way that built up to YAB members designing agendas and facilitating meetings themselves
- Gradually transitioning responsibilities to the YAB over time
This approach of transferring ownership over the YAB to young people has led to stronger engagement and depth of conversation and has built members’ skills to think strategically and create opportunities for the NYEB, beyond an advisory position.
2. Systems thinking elevates lived experience
The NYEB is a project aimed at shifting local and national systems that hinder youth employment. A key focus of the YAB is to leverage their lived experience to identify and advise on barriers and opportunities across the systems impacting youth employment.
We spent time building the capacity of YAB members to understand the youth employment ecosystem and how their personal experiences related to the wider system. When members mapped out the broader youth employment landscape, they were able to situate their personal experiences within broader trends, highlight systemic flaws, and advocate for strategic, long-term solutions. This same thinking has helped members design several recommendations for the community and youth employment sector, which will be released in a paper in late 2026.
![[decorative]](https://nyeb.bsl.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/anna-quote-1024x535.png)
Anna, Youth Advisory Board Member from Eurobodalla, reflects on this:
“The perspective I’ve gained from being on this board is that the difficulties young people I know are facing are not in isolation, they are they are the product of issues in greater systems, that are failing young people all around Australia.”
3. Inclusive facilitation is an ongoing learning and practice
Our eight YAB members represent diverse ages, regional locations, cultural backgrounds, and lived experiences across Australia.
We apply inclusive and accessible principles into every step of the meeting preparation, structure, and facilitation of the Youth Advisory Board. Bringing together such varied perspectives means there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to engagement and it’s crucial that all members can participate safely and confidently so that they can meaningfully engage and contribute their diverse perspectives.
Here’s how we have applied those principles:
- “What to expect” agendas: Prior to every board meeting, we provide “agendas, so members can digest information at their own pace and come prepared. This includes a short video explainer of the meeting purpose and agenda, providing background context, an overview of planned facilitation and highlighting where energy and decision-making will be focused. We also highlight what could be useful to think about before the meeting.
- Adaptable meeting flows: We have abandoned rigid agendas, instead prioritising productive
conversation. If a topic needs more time we have agreed as a group to adjust the
agenda through explicit conversation and group agreement. - Varied modes of contribution: Recognising that not everyone processes or shares information the same way, we embed varied modes of contribution, combining live verbal discussion, interactive digital tools, written feedback and non-verbal options, from showing thumbs up or down on camera to text messages and chat reactions
- Checking in: We regularly ask for feedback and refine the facilitation approach during meetings to ensure every voice was genuinely heard, valued, and reflected in the work of the YAB. To support different engagement styles, we also vary our delivery, giving options for group discussions, breakout rooms, Menti polls or visual slides based on what the group needs.
![[decorative]](https://nyeb.bsl.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/chloe-quote-1024x535.png)
Chloe, YAB member from Frankston-Mornington Peninsula, reflected on this:
“One skill that I’ve gained is the ability to ensure everyone is heard. Becoming attuned to how each of my fellow board members best expresses their experiences is something that will stick with me. Everyone’s perspective matters and sometimes people just need a different way to communicate it.”
What’s next?
Our YAB meets monthly, currently we’re working on producing a paper and webinar to be released late 2026. Watch this space for more updates!