The CO-CREATE Youth Stipends: Are you willing to be a changemaker?

Overweight and obesity among children and adolescents is on the rise across the world, impacting their health and wellbeing. In fact, estimates show that by 2025, one in every five children in Europe will be living with overweight or obesity. Urgent action is needed to create healthier environments for young people. To address this public-health challenge, CO-CREATE works with youth across Europe to mobilise and generate change.

CO-CREATE wants to give you the opportunity to help transform your ideas into action. With the CO-CREATE Youth Stipends, we invite you to apply for us to fund your activity or initiative that can help build healthier food and physical activity environments in your school or your community. This can be through dialogue, advocacy, research, or other actions. Activities can include hosting your own CO-CREATE Dialogue Forum (See example from Portugal below), developing a social media campaign to promote an issue of importance, or hosting a workshop with other young people to discuss actions to advance your ideas.

This is also an opportunity to join and contribute to the CO-CREATE Youth Conference in March 2022. Here, you will meet and connect with other young people across Europe working towards healthier and sustainable environments for all. We encourage you to use this opportunity to host a side session, plan an activity or host a workshop during the conference. Be creative, be bold, and think big with your ideas! You have the power to change your environment and help build a healthier society for young people like yourself.  

Tell me more!

This year, young leaders in Portugal received a grant from the CO-CREATE Youth Stipends to convene a CO-CREATE Dialogue Forum. These Forums are designed to facilitate youth-led dialogues with stakeholders and to collectively identify action and commitments. Youth in Portugal are bringing policymakers, business leaders, and experts together in Lisbon to discuss three youth-led policy ideas on access to physical activity, nutrition education, and marketing of unhealthy food and beverages to children and youth.

The aim of this dialogue is to raise awareness amongst the invited stakeholders and external youth regarding the issues inherent to the topics of each policy idea; to receive feedback to understand how they can improve the policy proposals and move forward with concrete actions, and to establish partnerships with stakeholders and other youth. 

I want to apply! Now, what?

This call for submissions will be open from September 14th to December 19th. Young people between 16-25 years old in Europe are eligible for funding.

Is this you? Apply here!

Should you have any questions about this opportunity or how to fill in the application, please reach out to Marianna Debelian at marianna@eatforum.org. We also welcome you to join us for “The Road to the Youth Conference”, on December 8th at 8:00 PM CET. This meeting is both a preparatory meeting for the CO-CREATE Youth Conference and an open Q&A for potential applicants of the Youth Stipends. Register here if you would like to join the meeting!

We look forward to supporting you in the fight for a better and healthier society!