Youcount

YouCount is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme. Through YouCount we aim to address one of Europe’s most pressing challenges: How to increase social inclusion for young people? How do people experience social inclusion? From previous studies we know that social inclusion is experienced when three main criteria are met: participation, belonging and citizenship. But do young people understand social inclusion that way? They may agree that participating in social life in a meaningful way or feeling connected to others are important, but there may be other dimensions of social inclusion that are relevant for them. Young people also know better than anyone else, what their daily lived experiences of inclusion and exclusion are. That is why our research team includes young citizen scientists participating as young co-researchers in the project. Throughout the project they will contribute with their own knowledge on social inclusion and co-create, together with policy makers, community leaders and other relevant actors in their own communities and regions, new knowledge and innovations that contribute to increase social inclusion in practice. Young co-researchers will participate in the project through hands on citizen science. Citizen science involves researchers and young co-researchers creating local living labs, doing interviews, developing dialogue forums, organising local and national workshops and using and app specifically created to gather and share daily lived experiences of inclusion and exclusion. It also involves co-evaluating our impact and how co-created citizen social science worked across the cases as well as within each case. We call this type of research Youth Citizen Science.