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What is it?
Awareness is the first step in enabling young people's participation. Before a young person can say yes to an opportunity, they have to see it, and seeing it is never an accident.
For many young people, discovering an opportunity that feels genuinely relevant to them is rare. Most communication from organisations passes them by: too formal, too broad, or showing up in the wrong place entirely.
Organisations that get this right show up in the channels young people already use, carried by voices young people already trust.
Common challenges
What barriers do organisations face at this stage?
Awareness is the first thing to fall off the list when programs are running. Every organisation surveyed named this as their biggest barrier, and without dedicated hours to invest, they struggled to build recognition on social platforms.
Organisations feel confident raising awareness in general, but not on the platforms young people actually use. Most maintain a LinkedIn presence they know does not reach young people effectively.
The rest rely on informal partners, networks, and word of mouth. Meanwhile, structured channels like career fairs, open days, and youth job portals sit almost untouched.
What we heard
Verbatim from Community of Practice members during the Awareness session.
We use LinkedIn, but we don't have a social media presence on commonly used platforms like Instagram or TikTok. There's nothing that really attracts young people, which we should have.
Community of Practice member
We don't have a broader process for attracting young people, such as direct school campaigns. Instead, we are connecting with orgs who are already connected with youth.
Community of Practice member
Guiding insights
What patterns emerged across every organisation we spoke to? Hover or tap any card for the insight behind it.
Young people stay engaged with something that feels made for a specific community, not something trying to reach everyone. Get this right and awareness compounds, because they invite peers who share the same values.
Young people are unlikely to stumble onto an opportunity. The organisations that reach them consistently are the ones that treat discovery as something deliberately designed rather than left to luck.
Young people discover opportunities through the communities they're already part of. An organisation with a living, visible community around its work gets discovered organically.
Young people are perceptive about the difference between being genuinely involved and being used as a symbol of inclusion. When they hold real decision-making influence, they become advocates, and that changes the nature of awareness entirely.
Young people rarely engage after a single encounter, because familiarity accumulates through repeated presence across different spaces. Organisations that expect their first campaign to land usually give up too early.
Strategy Playbook
Nine strategies across three themes. Pick a theme, then open any strategy for a worked example.
A visible, predictable presence in the handful of spaces young people already spend time, online and offline, rather than broad coverage nobody notices.
Identify the one platform young people spend time on, and commit your effort instead of choosing every channel.
Find one upcoming event where young people already gather, such as a careers fair, expo, or festival, and offer an interactive activity.
Commit to a publishing schedule you can actually sustain, and hold it long enough for familiarity and trust to build.
Communication that sounds like a person, shows the real work in progress, and lets young people hear about the experience in a peer's voice rather than the organisation's.
Before publishing, read it aloud. Cut any word you would never say in conversation to someone in front of you.
Document the journey of your work, including the challenges, unexpected moments, and how young people have shaped it.
Bring in a young person who already makes content to produce fun, entertaining videos.
A living space young people return to between opportunities, with real ownership over what gets made and shared, so engagement outlasts any single program or post.
Create a moderated space where young people can talk between events, and seed it with content that gives them a reason to return.
Hand a young person or small group control of your social media, with a brief and payment for their time.
Find young people already enthusiastic about your work, and equip them to share opportunities in their own voice.
Reference Panels
Two tables that apply across stages rather than only to Awareness.
Incentives are not only financial. These five types cover what young people told us made an opportunity worth their time. Select one, or compare all five side by side.
Direct payment for time and contribution, through stipends, honorariums, gift cards, or award-wage roles.
It tells young people their expertise has real-world value, and removes one of the most common reasons they say no.
- Provide honorariums or gift cards to value youth time and skills.
- Offer award-wage roles to encourage sustained engagement and responsibility.
- Give flexible micro-grants that youth control to empower ownership.
Tangible professional experience in the opportunity itself, through paid roles, internships, or portfolios.
It gives young people proof of experience they can point to long after the work is done.
- Write reference letters and endorsements to validate contributions.
- Provide paid internships and project roles for real-world experience.
- Support youth to turn their job tasks into a career portfolio that showcases their achievements.
Skill-building and personal growth, through workshops, certifications, or mentoring relationships.
It makes the role valuable in itself, because every shift builds a skill they keep.
- Offer targeted workshops that help youth build new skills.
- Provide online courses and certifications to support continuous learning.
- Pair youth with mentors for guidance, growth, and confidence-building.
- Use reverse mentoring to elevate youth voices in trainings.
Formal acknowledgement of their contribution, through credits, references, or ceremonies.
It tells young people their work mattered and that someone is paying attention.
- Credit youth publicly on publications and social media.
- Host thank you events and award ceremonies.
Access to people and networks, through peer connections, introductions, and projects.
It gives young people a community to belong to and connections that outlast the role.
- Host peer networking events to facilitate connections.
- Connect youth with industry professionals and experts.
- Include youth in real projects to encourage collaboration with professionals.
- Organise community co-creation days to co-design programs.
Direct payment for time and contribution, through stipends, honorariums, gift cards, or award-wage roles.
Tangible professional experience in the opportunity itself, through paid roles, internships, or portfolios.
Skill-building and personal growth, through workshops, certifications, or mentoring relationships.
Formal acknowledgement of their contribution, through credits, references, or ceremonies.
Access to people and networks, through peer connections, introductions, and projects.
It tells young people their expertise has real-world value, and removes one of the most common reasons they say no.
It gives young people proof of experience they can point to long after the work is done.
It makes the role valuable in itself, because every shift builds a skill they keep.
It tells young people their work mattered and that someone is paying attention.
It gives young people a community to belong to and connections that outlast the role.
- Provide honorariums or gift cards to value youth time and skills.
- Offer award-wage roles to encourage sustained engagement and responsibility.
- Give flexible micro-grants that youth control to empower ownership.
- Write reference letters and endorsements to validate contributions.
- Provide paid internships and project roles for real-world experience.
- Support youth to turn their job tasks into a career portfolio that showcases their achievements.
- Offer targeted workshops that help youth build new skills.
- Provide online courses and certifications to support continuous learning.
- Pair youth with mentors for guidance, growth, and confidence-building.
- Use reverse mentoring to elevate youth voices in trainings.
- Credit youth publicly on publications and social media.
- Host thank you events and award ceremonies to celebrate milestones.
- Lead legacy projects or spaces to carry forward youth contributions long-term.
- Host peer networking events to facilitate connections.
- Connect youth with industry professionals and experts.
- Include youth in real projects to encourage collaboration with professionals.
- Organise community co-creation days to co-design programs.
Incentives are not only financial. These five types cover what young people told us made an opportunity worth their time. Select one, or compare all five side by side.
Another young person at a similar stage
Shared experience, encouragement without authority
To feel understood by someone who gets it, and less alone in the struggle
Often, and informal
A friendly colleague, close in age or stage
Answers questions, gives a tour, helps them feel included
To get familiar, slowly settle in, and ask questions without pressure
Daily, in the first weeks
A more experienced colleague, not their manager
Offers advice on handling workplace situations, projects, decisions, and culture
To build their confidence over time and navigate challenges
Periodically, over time
An internal or external coach or supervisor
Helps them reflect, build skills, track progress, and improve in an area of work
To build a particular skill, such as speaking up or leading tasks, or work toward a goal
Scheduled, regular sessions
Another young person at a similar stage
A friendly colleague, close in age or stage
A more experienced colleague who is not their manager
An internal or external coach or supervisor
Shared experience and encouragement, without authority
Answers questions, gives a tour, and helps them feel included
Offers advice on workplace situations, projects, decisions, and organisational culture
Helps them reflect, build skills, track progress, and improve in a specific area of work
When they want to feel understood by someone who gets it and feel less alone in the struggle
When they are getting familiar with a new environment, settling in, and asking questions without pressure
When they want to build confidence over time and navigate challenges
When they want to build a particular skill, such as speaking up or leading tasks, or work towards a specific goal
Often and informally
Daily during the first few weeks
Periodically over time
Scheduled, regular sessions
Ripple Opportunities
SYDNEY // NEW SOUTH WALES
This case study is part of the Youth Engagement Playbook. Download the full playbook to explore all six stages of youth engagement and take the self-assessment.
In 2019, Ripple Opportunities made a choice to build an audience through usefulness rather than marketing. It began as a small community of young changemakers, guided by a simple conviction that if you become genuinely useful to young people, you never have to chase them.
Instead of promoting, the team started giving away value. It began with an email newsletter sharing impact opportunities, which soon grew into free Zoom webinars offering career guidance to young people. Providing value-add worked because it earned trust before anything was asked in return, and young people came back to something that was helping them rather than selling to them.
That insight shaped everything about how the newsletter was built. Every edition arrived on a rhythm the team could sustain, because familiarity builds through repetition. Every opportunity inside it was designed to be understood in seconds and forwarded in a single tap:
- A one-line summary of each opportunity that can be read in seconds.
- A quick overview covering what the role is, who it suits and what it offers.
- A direct link to apply, removing every step between interest and action.
- A featured community member and their win, so readers see peers like themselves succeeding.
Opportunities that are quick to understand and share can amplify reach organically, and because forwarding it was effortless, Ripple began travelling on its own through group chats and friend groups. This is where the growth really came from. Young people trusted a recommendation from a friend far more than any advertisement, and every edition arrived with a peer's endorsement already attached.
Ripple's focus stayed deliberately narrow: young people and early career professionals in the impact space, rather than everyone. The audience stayed engaged because the platform feels built for their community, and it continued to expand because peers kept asking to join.
Today, Ripple is a specialised recruitment platform connecting mission-aligned talent with impact-led organisations, and its growth from zero to more than 10,000 young people did not require endless paid ads. This is what awareness looks like when it is done well. It is not a campaign pointed at young people, but something useful enough that they point each other to it.
Where do you stand on Awareness?
Now it's your turn. Take an honest look at how your organisation is doing on [stage]. Rate each statement from one to five, and you'll see exactly where to start."
Download The Nine Strategies
A one page summary you can bring to a team meeting, with the worked examples and the self-assessment.
All nine strategies across Channels, Messaging & Community Building
The worked example for each one
The Social Media 101 format table
The seven statement self-assessment, printable
