The Role of Children and Youth in Building Resilient Societies in the Baltic Sea Region

The Pre-Study aims to understand how children and youth could be empowered to play an active role as contributors to societal resilience, and how existing barriers to their active involvement in disaster prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery could be removed. In particular, this study identifies and explores critical factors that enable or hinder children and youth from playing an active role in building resilient societies.

The findings of the Pre-Study stem from the literature review, fourteen focus group discussions with children of different ages (7-25 years) and 24 interviews with experts from diverse fields and with different perspectives, mandates, and approaches. Among the subjects explored are awareness of risks, disaster and safety, children and youth’s concerns and how they ‘rate’ risks and disaster, ability and willingness to engage in disaster risk reduction (DRR), sources and emotional impact of information, barriers to the involvement of children and youth in DRR and benefits that would result from involving children and youth in DRR.