CitizenYou Framework

A collaborative approach to activating youth leadership by improving positive learning and life outcomes

Our objective is to activate youth leadership by enabling youth to uncover their emerging capacities.

Youth often miss out on opportunities to grow into confident adults through developing their self-determination during early years. At school, some students can be excluded from coordinated planning and meetings or miss out learning opportunities to plan and set goals all together.


We remove barrier for participation. There are limited services that support youth involvement in making the same choices about their education as their peers. Preparing for transition to adulthood starts long before youth graduates from or exits school (Wehmeyer, 2007); These processes need to be initiated as early as possible to set the foundation for youth to succeed in their post-school life (Dempsey and Keen, 2008; Jung, 2010).


This program is based on Dr. Simon Duffy's Keys to Citizenship concepts (2010) about how we can achieve citizenship in practice for everyone. "Citizenship is a funny word - and it can have several meanings - but it is a useful word, because it can be used to describe how human beings can live together - with justice and mutual respect" says Dr. Duffy. We are all citizens, and we all have rights and responsibilities.


In the video below, he describes the 7 elements that form a good life.

What is the Keys to Citizenship Framework

  • Being respected - being able to hold your head up high and getting respect from those around you

  • Being equal - citizens all have the same fundamental worth or dignity, they don’t believe that just because someone has more money, power or a better-paid job that this makes them a better person

  • Being different - citizens are not identical, they have many different gifts which they bring together to build a better world

Citizenship is important because it reminds us that we can each live a good life, in our own way, while also being able to live together with mutual respect.

Photo above: The workshop booklet that participants work on.

To discuss the results of past programs, please contact Dr. Annick Janson, Director, Research & Innovation annick.janson@egl.ac.nz

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