The Young Experts Team

Who we are and what is particularly important to us...

We are the Young Experts Team, a group of young people aged 14 to 19 from all over Germany who are committed to social justice and the participation of young people. We campaign for a louder voice for young people in political processes. After all, decisions about young people should not be made without young people.

To this end, we create participatory formats by young people for young people. In workshops and conferences, we invite other children and young people to get involved in politics, advocate for their interests and needs and communicate these directly to invited politicians.

We deal with all topics that move and affect young people. In our work and at our events, we talk about child poverty, social inequality, youth participation, education, school, (mental) health and all other topics that children and young people bring with them.

The Young Experts Team is currently supported and moderated by Nadja Althaus (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main).

Within the Bertelsmann Stiftung, we are part of the projects Family and Education: Thinking Politics from the Child's Perspective and School Education.

• Children are experts in their own world.
• We children and young people need to be consulted, because only we know what we really need to realize ourselves.
• Children need money to live, not just to survive.
• By young people for young people.

Cologne, the first meeting of our team in May 2023: We all got to know each other and worked out how we define ourselves, what our issues and goals are, how we want to implement them and how our collaboration can work well. By visiting parts of the former Young Expert Team, we were able to familiarize ourselves with their work and learn from their experiences. We also visited the theatre and circus education center `LATIBUL´ in Cologne and tried out theatre education and acrobatic exercises there.

Bielefeld, the second meeting of our team in September 2023: We mainly prepared the workshops for the first children's and youth conference ‘Future Voices: Now we are in demand!’, which is why most of the cooperating scientists from various universities and institutes were present for the first time. They presented their topics and working methods. We allocated ourselves to the various workshops and worked out the initial plans.

Fulda, the first face-to-face meeting of our team after the first conference in February 2024: Despite many absences due to illness, we worked out what we liked and didn't like about the conference. We broke ground for our next conferences. We also focussed on our team building and worked on how we can work and cooperate even better as a team.

In June 2024, we spent a weekend at the youth hostel in Eisenach to prepare for our upcoming children's and youth conferences. Young people from Eisenach and the surrounding area who would like to help organize the conferences also came to this in-person meeting. We also worked together on our workshop concept.

The highlight: our children's and youth conferences in eastern Germany in September 2024! Together, we spent a whole week travelling to Eisenach and Chemnitz, where we worked with local young people to hold two more conferences in the ‘Voices of the future: Now it's our turn!’ series. We learnt a lot about the local situation and the wishes and needs of young people and had an intensive and enjoyable time together.

In November 2024, we were in Frankfurt am Main. There we met our cooperation partners from Goethe University Frankfurt, Sabine Andresen and Nadja Althaus.

This was followed by a workshop at the hostel in Frankfurt am Main with three researchers from the Institute for Social Work (ISA) in Münster, where we discussed the results of their representative survey of needs for and with children and young people. Some of us are now also part of the newly formed editorial team, which is working on its own brochure to comment on the study.

The editorial team met with Iris Stegmann in Cologne in January 2025 to plan the concept and content of the brochure. We also discussed other formats that could be used to disseminate the results, such as social media posts or podcasts.

For the first time, a JEx meeting took place at the Bertelsmann Foundation in Gütersloh from 7 to 9 March 2025.

The focus here was on continuing work on the commentary on the ISA study and producing social media content for YouTube and Instagram. We were supported in this by Emma Rüther and Iris Stegmann. We also reflected on previous children’s and youth conferences for the final report and planned further events such as Peer2Politics and a primary school conference in Duisburg for 2025.

We got to know Gütersloh town centre better during an outdoor escape game and rounded off the evening together at a restaurant.

On 15 May, our Peer2Politics event took place at the Bertelsmann Stiftung in Berlin to mark the publication of the study “The Needs of Children and Young People for a Successful Upbringing”.

We chaired the event and presented the contents of the study to the participants. This was also based on our own published booklet “With us!”, in which we have contextualised and commented on the key themes and findings of the study in the areas of finance, education and health from our perspective, and derived policy recommendations. The event was attended by the new Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, Mareike Wulf (CDU); Members of the Bundestag Felix Döring (SPD), Denise Loop (GRÜNE) and Mareike Hermeier (LINKE); as well as various stakeholders and speakers.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

On 20 September 2025, to mark World Children’s Day, another conference in the “Future Voices: Now It’s Our Turn!” series took place – this time at Hochfelder Markt Primary School in Duisburg. This enabled us to use the participatory format to engage with the everyday lives of young children growing up in a neighbourhood facing particular social challenges. 
In workshops we had prepared, the children were able to use a variety of playful methods to convey their concerns, wishes and needs directly to the participating politicians.

Following almost three years of intensive collaboration between the Youth Experts Team (JEx Team) and projects run by the Bertelsmann Foundation, the closing meeting took place in Wiesbaden from 13 to 15 November 2025.  To mark the occasion, we once again organised the tried-and-tested Peer2Politics format – this time with politicians from the Hessian State Parliament.

Background: In October 2024, a commission of inquiry on ‘Youth Participation’ was set up there, but so far it had had little direct engagement with young people – we wanted to change that. 
The JEx team moderated the event, presented the contents of their own ‘With us!’ brochure to the participants and created space for dialogue. In the subsequent World Café, the participants discussed the educational, financial and health-related needs of young people. Those present included Cirsten Kunz-Strüder (SPD), Max Schad (CDU), Julia Herz (GRÜNE) and Wiebke Knell (FDP), as well as stakeholders from Hessian, such as Miriam Zeleke, and youth representative bodies such as the HUSKJ. In a closing session, the participants outlined what they would take away from the evening for their work: “Talk more with young people”, “address the issues of education and participation”, “create spaces for young people” and tackle the “issue of mental health” were the key takeaways from the politicians. The young people from Hessian who took part have resolved to “make their voices heard even more” and to “devote as much time as possible to getting involved”.

Since the second JEx team was set up in early 2023, the Young Experts have made a real difference.

As part of the Bertelsmann projects “Family and Education: Creating Child-Centered Policies” and “School Education”, the members have met regularly in person and online during this time, developed and implemented their own formats, experienced empowerment and participation, and used their expertise to advise on the “School Education” and “Family and Education: Creating Child-Centered Policies” projects. With the conclusion of these projects, the JEx team has now come together one last time in Wiesbaden.

The project “Family and Education: Creating Child-Centered Policies” – and with it our collaboration with our JEx team – came to an end on 31 December 2025.

However, we would like to continue working on, amongst other things, the already established concept of children’s conferences.

That is why we launched our new project, “Growing Up in Well-being”, on 1 January 2026.

Further information will follow shortly…