Youth4Foresight Toolkit

Foresight offers a method for positive engagement beyond the focus on past or current issues, fostering creativity and providing alternatives to current paradigms. It helps us to navigate uncertainty, to think and explore:

• possible future(s) that could arise over a 5/10-30 years horizon,
• the potential implications, opportunities, and challenges these might present.

Foresight is neither forecasting, nor predicting the future. It helps us act in the present to shape the future(s) we want, using transition pathways and trends.

This toolkit has been produced for EU-funded projects and EU staff who engage with young people as part of the EU external action, including youth organisations, and any other kind of youth advisory structures at the local or national level.

It includes resources co-created by DG INTPA and EU Delegations, to “future-proof” its work and covers:  

• Introduction to the Toolkit - a 10-pager that includes how to run events using foresight and to facilitate foresight workshops
• Introduction Video to Foresight (10 min)
• Warm up Diving into the Futures Mindset
• 7 Foresight Techniques (instructions, facilitation tips, and 5-minute explanatory videos)
  • Tool Images of the Future - and overcoming personal and societal clichés and biases
  • Tool Detectives of the Future - and horizon scanning to detect current trends
  • Tool Futures Wheel - and exploring the ripple effect of a new idea, signal of change or a trend
  • Tool Three Horizons - and the managers, entrepreneurs and visionaries to guide the pace of change
  • Tool Visioning - and our five senses to dive deep into visions of the future
  • Tool Backcasting and Action Planning - and working backward from a desirable future state
  • Tool Reflecting and Taking Action - and translating learnings into future work
• Empower Landing - and wrapping up with clear recommendations, action and/or next steps. 

The toolkit supports the implementation of the Youth Action Plan in EU external action (YAP), through which the EU builds a partnership with young people worldwide - by engaging, empowering, and connecting them through various processes and actions. In particular, the YAP supports the commitments to increase the voice and leadership of young people, promote their involvement in the EU external policies and actions. It can also serve as an additional means for EU-funded projects, including from the DEAR Programme, to engage with young people.