If you are under 25 and interested in increasing your soft skills, learning more about the Swiss political system, and meeting like-minded people, this project is for you!
Do you reside in any of these Cantons: Geneva, Vaud, Bern, Zurich, Basel, or St. Gallen?
Do you have a change-maker attitude, a will to co-design the future, and have an impact on Swiss Politics?
How to become a Futures Champion in 5 steps:
- Follow this Challenge to be up to date with the latest developments.
- Apply to Become a Futures Champion: FR / DE
- If you are selected, you will receive an invitation to join the 2023’s cohort.
- Participate in the different training sessions:
- One in-person workshop in Bern on 26 May
- Two Online sessions throughout the Summer
- Facilitate a workshop at your home place, with the support of your mentors.
- Collect, analyze, and prepare ideas for the future of CH foreign policy.
- Present the ideas to different decision-makers in 2024!
During the first quarter of 2023, we will select a cohort of Future Champions from different Swiss Cantons. These change-makers will receive training on Futures Literacy, Participatory Policy Making, Workshop Moderation, and also on the Swiss Political System and Foreign Policy.
“Future Champions” is a foraus’ project that aims to increase young people's participation in the democratic debate. By providing you with the necessary tools and knowledge in key areas we have the goal to:
- Empower and enable you to impact politics with your ideas
- Provide you with the needed tools to design your futures
- Equip you with project design and management skills
- Strengthen your ability to listen and exchange in a group with different ideas and then present the group’s ideas to other actors, such as politicians and relevant stakeholders
- Strengthen your feeling to be able to meaningfully impact and have a say in how your future is designed and realized
What is Futures Literacy?
You might be rightly wondering now… what is this “futures literacy” thing? Rightly so! This is a quite new term that is used by UNESCO to define a capability: a universal skill built on the ability to imagine the future to encourage imagination, preparedness, and the ability to reinvent and recover as changes occur. Within this concept, the future becomes a policy-making tool to transform current governance.
Many NGOs are now using Futures Literacy to help young people visualize future scenarios and work on policy recommendations. We have also used Futures Literacy in past projects, for example, to help youths in the Northeast Asia region visualize common future perspectives.
How?
We will identify and select 10 futures champions among a pool of Swiss youths with the goal to represent different identities of the Swiss confederation. If your application is successful and you are selected as a Futures Champion, you will receive training by foraus on futures literacy, participatory policy-making and basic notions of the Swiss political system. Afterward, you will run workshops in your local community to identify desirable outcomes of the future and develop actionable policy recommendations based on those visions. Finally, the results of these workshops will be shared with representatives of the forming government in 2024. As a Future Champion, you will be accompanied and supported by foraus throughout the whole process, to ensure high-quality standards and successful implementation of the project.
When?
During the first half of 2023, foraus will select a group of change-makers to become Future Champions. After training, they will use foraus’ digital crowd-innovation platform Policy Kitchen to conduct local participatory futures workshops at their cantons of origin during the second half of the year.
Outcome
Through these workshops, you will get the chance to use collective intelligence to identify critical trends, build scenarios and ideate actionable pathways for critical policy areas. The outputs of the workshops that you will run will then be compiled into a policy publication that will be presented and discussed with members of the forming government in 2024, to influence the new government's agenda.
For any further information, do not hesitate to contact us.