The toolkit's goal is for you, as an individual or a group, to find issues in your local community and develop ideas on how to change them! There is a set of three fun activities through which you develop your very own idea that can have a positive impact in your community, school, university, workplace, or beyond! 

There are three methods; Visual Voice, Systems Mapping and the Dialogue Forum. Visual Voice is an activity where you go out in your community and take pictures of the different things that interest you to start your journey towards making your policy idea. 

Systems mapping is similar to a mind map, and shows all the important relationships between the things that influence an issue. 

The Dialogue Forum is a tool you can use to discuss your policy idea in a group setting with other young people and relevant policy- and decision-makers. It helps you to understand other peoples’ views on the topic/issue, and potential actions you can take to create change. 

In the WHO EURO region, every third child is living with overweight or obesity. The COSI data study on childhood obesity has found the prevalence of overweight and obesity among boys is 31%, while among girls it is 28%.  

1 in 10 children (11%) aged 6–9 years in the surveyed 33 countries (411,000 school-aged children) never ate vegetables or did so less than once a week. 

The Toolkit can be used for developing advocacy ideas on topics such as better public health (for example, tackling rising overweight and obesity), or on other policy areas like improving education, protecting the environment, championing human rights, or you can examine an issue facing your local community such as air pollution. The choice is yours!  

Youth organisations, civil society organisations, school classes or youth groups can all benefit from CO-CREATE's Youth Advocacy Toolkit. 

The Toolkit will be translated into further languages, such as Norwegian. We will publish the download links to the Toolkit translations in this section when available. Keep an eye on this page, and CO-CREATE's social media channels for updates.  

CO-CREATE is a five-year research project which involves young people to generate policy ideas which can halt the rise of adolescent obesity. There are 14 academic, civil society organisations involved in the project, and researchers involve young people in finding out how adolescent obesity is caused, how to prevent it, and develop methods to engage & empower young people in improving health.  

The CO-CREATE teams publish research, hold Youth Alliances and Dialogue Forums, analyse policies, develop youth engagement tools, and advocacy resources (like this Toolkit!). The CO-CREATE Youth Taskforce are eight young people who represent young peoples’ views in project processes and research. They represent the project at youth events, take part in policy generation activities, and have published a Youth Declaration to call for action on obesity.  

The Youth Advocacy Toolkit was produced through the CO-CREATE project (funded by the Horizon 2020 research programme). The content was developed by, and has been led by Press – Save the Children Youth Norway, and the Toolkit was designed by the World Obesity Federation.