Q+A with UNICEF’s Youth Foresight Fellows
Young people are our future, but how much say do we actually give them in designing the future?
Written by Kitty McKinsey
UN Global Pulse provided financial and technical expertise to support the first cohort of UNICEF Youth Foresight Fellows in 2022–2023. Those Fellows designed the youth foresight process for Prospects for Children in the Polycrisis: A Global Outlook for Children in 2023 and Our Future Pledge toolkit for a global foresight youth campaign.
We recently brought together two of these Fellows — Fisayo Oyewale, 26, from Nigeria, and Joshua Steib, 20, from Germany — to talk about foresight and intergenerational equity.
Fisayo Oyewale is an agriculturist and foresight practitioner who set up an agribusiness company five years ago that uses farming as a tool for economic empowerment of young people and women. She is an alumna of the 2022 School of International Futures (SOIF), supported by UN Global Pulse. Joshua Steib, now studying at Harvard University, uses piano, poetry and even juggling in his climate activism. He was a delegate to the COP 26 climate change conference in Glasgow and co-drafted the global youth position paper on climate change presented there.
In many parts of the world, there is a strong hierarchy, and young people are just supposed to obey their elders. Do you think that is changing? Is the world more interested in the voices of young people now?
FO: Gradually. I think what really opened things up is technological advancement, with so many young people working in the tech space. There is no barrier to entry for young people. It’s more about what you can offer, what you can do than years of experience. The real question is, why are young people being brought on board? And at what stage in the process? What sometimes happens is they bring us on board for certain conversations, but we are not part of the end to end process; we’re not there from the design stage to evaluation to impact assessment. We
don’t know what happened and we don’t know if the outcome would have been different if we added our voice at the beginning.
JS: From my experience, there are very few programs that are about actual youth participation. The UNICEF Youth Fellowship is a perfect example of how youth participation should look, an end-to-end process. We were involved from design to delivery. Everything was done with us and not just about us.
Too many programs are designed to bring young people in for a conference but not to really give them a voice. I think this is changing. Young people are more vocal about how they want to be engaged.
There were only nine UNICEF Youth Foresight Fellows in 2022 from the whole world. How did you get to be two of them?
JS: They wanted to get a bunch of practitioners with very different perspectives, and I think they were successful. We came from basically all continents, from so many different countries, from so many different backgrounds — which might be even more important. It was a fantastic experience.
FO: One thing we all had in common was we already had something going on that shows we can actually be a part of change for a generation. We’re not out there for ourselves as individuals, but we wanted to contribute to something that is huge and would contribute to generations to come. This was one thing all nine of us shared and it was probably the vision the UNICEF team was looking for.
How did strategic foresight become so much a part of your lives and your work?
JS The first impression I got when I told my friends or my family about foresight was: “what is foresight?” It’s pretty sad that it’s not well known and still not very widespread, especially not in policy making. After my first contact with foresight, I realised that if it’s done correctly, there’s great potential to it. Earlier I had been involved as the youth expert on an extensive foresight project about Climate Resilience in 2035–2050 by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research. That’s when I realised this can be a solution for short-termism in policymaking.
Foresight is not just a tool, but a mindset, an attitude, and a way of life. It is the ability to look beyond the present moment and envision the possibilities that lie ahead. The moment young people and foresight practices are finally part of the decision-making, we will be able to turn the tide and solve some of the biggest challenges of our time.
FO: I think of it as a way of life because even before I got into practice on the professional front, I have always had anxiety about what tomorrow would look like and what I can do about it. When I realised there is really a science dedicated to this, it was really exciting. With my crude knowledge of what foresight is and without having had the proper training, I became a Next Generation Foresight Practitioner; I was one of the 22 people that worked on what Africa digital societies would look like by the year 2050. I came up with scenarios — vision — for Nigeria by 2050. In exploring what will take place in 2050, we are beginning to see the seeds in the present. That’s the joy of being a foresight practitioner.
From there I went on to design my own project with farmers because the ability to think about the future should not be a skill I keep to myself. I’ve been working with communities that are all tied down in the present to help them realise they can shape their own futures. Foresight for me has always been a way of life, but it is a skill that should not belong to one person, it should be democratised as much as possible.
You’re talking about seeds and you’re working with farmers. Don’t farmers naturally practice some kind of foresight?
FO: Yes, they are thinking about what’s to come, but foresight is not complete in itself if it is not empowering. Foresight is more about what you do with this information or how you can influence change. How can they have better livelihoods and improve the economy of their communities? That was a missing part.
This is an important element in intergenerational equity, the idea that humanity is a partnership among all generations. Is this a concept we still have to sell? Isn’t it clear that our actions today affect future generations?
JS: I think young people are very, very good about intergenerational equity. During the pandemic, young people were incredibly perceptive to the needs of the older generation. They sacrificed a lot. We did it without asking something in return. If you have to pitch the idea of intergenerational equity to someone, then it is to those who were raised without an idea of intergenerational equity. It’s not that some people or generations do not want to embrace intergenerational equity per se, but unfortunately political parties all over the world are instrumentalising the fears of these people to make them think intergenerational equity takes something away from them, when it’s actually just recognising that it maybe was never theirs in the first place. Policymakers have an insane disincentive to not bring about policies that might embrace intergenerational equity. And that’s what we young people want to change.
FO: If you ask me who are the people that we should be talking to about foresight, I think it’s people at both ends of the spectrum — the older generation who have the power and experience, and the younger generation who are dreamers and visionaries and have the energy to make things happen. Foresight brings in that balance between younger and older generations. Whether older people feel guilty about what happened in the past or whatever, this is just the perfect time for them to contribute to the process of making things right again.
Not everybody can be a UNICEF Youth Foresight Fellow the way the two of you have been. What would you tell young people around the world who do want to make a change?
JS: I think first of all we have to acknowledge that only small portion of young people around the world have the means to do activism, to do advocacy because millions of children still suffer from poverty, lack of education and malnutrition, which is insane in 2023. For those who can make their voice heard, I think the easiest way is to find other people who also want to change something and then start at a local level. It’s not only about international activism. In fact, local advocacy might be far more impactful than international advocacy. Push the ideas you have, but you have to bring determination and have like-minded people around you.
FO: I will also start from the point of community because what drives me to do what I do is the impact — what does the impact look like? Every young person on an international platform did not start off there; they also started from the ground up. I think it’s even easier to work at the grassroots level because that’s where you have a certain control, and you can actually see the impact of your work. I feel like the happiest people are the people at the grassroots because they can see how they’re
able to put smiles on people’s faces. They see the impact in real life. Not everything is in figures and statistics.
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UN Global Pulse’s work supporting UN agencies to leverage foresight and initiative was pivotal in creating the necessary conditions for UNICEF to kick off its Youth Foresight function.
The second cycle of UNICEF Youth Foresight Fellowship (UYFF) has just kicked off. It’s an intensive, year-long program designed to foster and harness the talents of young visionaries aged 15–25 from Algeria, Argentina, Comoros, Egypt, Ghana, Maldives, Mali, Myanmar, Türkiye, Pakistan, UK and USA. Over the course of twelve months, the fellows will hone their foresight skills and have the opportunity to contribute to pioneering research and advocacy projects highlighting the transformative power of young minds to shape the future. For more information, reach out to Shai Naides, Chief of Youth Engagement at UNICEF Innocenti Global Office of Research and Foresight, at innocentiyouth@unicef.org
