6 Things We Learned From Co-Creating Social Impact Campaigns With Youth
If there’s one thing we’ve learned working on youth-focused social impact campaigns, it’s that involving young people from the very beginning is key. When youth help shape the work, campaigns become more relevant, more authentic, and more likely to connect with the people they’re meant to reach.
Too often, though, young people are treated as an afterthought. Campaigns aimed at them are often shaped by adult assumptions, filtered through “experts,” or informed by one-off focus groups. That kind of approach might check a box, but it rarely builds trust or sparks change.
So when we set out to create Never a Bother and Live Beyond — two award-winning statewide mental health campaigns for California — we knew we had to take a different approach. From the start, we brought in youth advisors as paid collaborators. They helped name the campaigns, shape the messaging, inform the strategy, test creative ideas, and represent the work in their communities.
By grounding the campaigns in their lived experiences, our youth advisors helped ensure the work felt real to their peers, opening space for honest conversations about suicide prevention, trauma, and healing.
Over the course of two years, we learned a lot about what true collaboration with youth can look like, and how powerful it can be when done right. Here are six takeaways from that process that will help others build deeper, more authentic partnerships with young people.
- Create safe spaces that build trust: Trust is everything. Young people won’t open up or show up fully if they don’t feel safe. Make your spaces welcoming, consistent, and respectful. Be honest about how their input will be used, and don’t ask for feedback you’re not ready to act on. Take the time to get to know each advisor as a person. Some might need to process materials in advance. Others may prefer to talk things out in real time. Stay flexible and adjust your approach based on what each person needs.
- Give Them a Real Role and Compensate Fairly: Young people’s time, voice, and input are valuable–and should be compensated equitably and fairly. If your budget doesn’t allow for payment, ensure you have other tangible training or development opportunities for them, and be upfront about what you can offer in exchange for their time. Look for ways to support their growth by inviting them to events, trainings, and conferences, and by connecting them with other teams and leaders they can learn from. For Never a Bother and Live Beyond, youth advisors helped name both campaigns in English and Spanish. They co-presented at partner meetings, shaped the website experience, and brought the work into their communities through storytelling and peer outreach. For Live Beyond, they also created original content like videos, photos, and personal reflections featured across the campaign.
Never a Bother’s Youth Advisory Board talks about their experience working on the campaign:
- Representation matters: The youth advisors should reflect the audience you’re trying to reach. If your campaign is for young adults in the Bay Area or Latinx Gen Z youth in Southern California, make sure those voices are present and active. Just as important: recognize that young people are not a monolith. Their diverse backgrounds, experiences, identities, and more should bring different or varying perspectives, like in this story featuring Angela, a youth advisor from Never a Bother who draws from their own mental health journey to empower other youth.
Sarah, a Never a Bother youth advisor and her dad talk mental health:
- Respect their time and communicate styles: Young people have a lot going on: school, jobs, family, sports, and more. This means they may not check email as frequently, and we in turn need to adjust how we communicate with them. This could mean group chats on text or social media. Ask them what works for them. We’re not their full time job, so set meeting times that work for all, which could be evenings or weekends. Meet consistently to help with their planning and keep the momentum and engagement strong.
- Be Mindful of Power Dynamics: Teens might be hesitant to speak up from the fear of saying the “wrong thing,” or offering a differing opinion, or may not feel comfortable saying no to requests, tasks, or assignments. Make sure you over-communicate options to say no, and set flexible parameters around involvement with your work, ensuring they can control their time, level of effort, and agency.
Click the image below to watch Luis, a youth advisor on Live Beyond, share stressbusters that work for him on Live Beyond’s IG channel:
- Connect Their Passions to the Work: Learn what excites each advisor. It could be design, content creation, advocacy or organizing events. Plug them into those parts of the campaign. Even small opportunities, like shadowing a creative director or joining a big activation (as we recently did for the Coachella music festival) can make them feel seen and inspired.
Never a Bother youth advisors at the campaign launch event:
Jada, a youth advisor for Live Beyond tabling for the campaign at a community event:
Final Thoughts
- Teens and Gen Z are culture-shapers, change-makers, and truth-tellers. When you bring them into the development process not just as an audience, but as collaborators and co-creators, you’ll build something that’s authentic and truly resonates.
- And, remember they are the bridge between intention and impact. And if you’re aiming to reach Gen Z and youth audiences, that bridge is one you can’t afford to skip.
We have partnered with more than 1,000 young people across California to create campaigns grounded in their voices and lived experiences. If you’re building a youth-centered campaign and want support rooted in real collaboration, Civilian is here to help. Contact Us.
Varinda Gupta is a Senior Account Executive at Civilian
Camellia Mortezazadeh is the Director of Strategy and Insights at Civilian