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What is it?
Engagement is about creating day-to-day environments where young people feel safe, connected, and motivated to keep showing up.
For many young people, the everyday experience of a place is what tells them whether they belong in it. When questions feel risky, when there's no room to step back, or when their ideas go nowhere, even a motivated young person quietly starts to disengage, long before they ever say so.
Organisations that get this right, ensure that young people feel valued, motivated, and confident to contribute.
Common challenges
What barriers do organisations face at this stage?
The channels organisations rely on, like staff meetings, emails, and rostering systems, often fail to reach young people, especially casual staff. Many organisations describe trying everything from online systems to free lunch and still struggling to reach young people.
Organisations want young people to lead but hesitate to hand over real control, defaulting to supervised involvement instead of genuine ownership. Many organisations describe an instinct to meet young people where they should be rather than where they are, and name this as the biggest mistake institutions make.
Messages delivered by authority figures often don't land, particularly with marginalised communities, and power dynamics can silence young people entirely. Many organisations describe young people weighing who's in the room before deciding whether they can speak at all.
What we heard
Verbatim from Community of Practice members during the Awareness session.
"Staff meetings and email updates don't land with casuals. Even free lunch doesn't work. Rostering is online, but staff won't check the system - we have defaulted to keeping critical messaging all in person."
Community of Practice member
"An authority figure doesn't land with marginalised communities."
Community of Practice member
"The biggest mistake institutions make is that we try to meet people where they should be, not where they are."
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 at this stage are involved, but still deciding whether the experience is worth continuing. Even committed participants can disengage, feel excluded, or withdraw when the conditions stop feeling right.
Continued engagement depends on feeling safe to ask questions, take risks, and share ideas without fear of looking foolish. Young people watch how the first few questions and mistakes are handled before deciding whether to risk their own.
Letting young people manage their own involvement — in tasks, pacing, and participation — reduces stress and builds genuine ownership. Someone who chose their role shows up differently from someone who was assigned it.
Young people contribute most readily on topics they already know, and stretch further once that confidence has been established. Asking for feedback on a campaign they've seen builds the footing to weigh in on projects they haven't, which is why the order of asks matters as much as the asks themselves.
No single mentor or check-in can catch everything, so guidance needs multiple channels: buddies, peers, forums, and open doors. Layers also let supervision fade gradually as independence grows, rather than being removed all at once.
Good Cycles
MELBOURNE // VICTORIA
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-assess
In 2013, Good Cycles was founded as Australia's first bike-based social enterprise, breaking down barriers to employment for young people. But its goal is not to hold young people as long as possible, but to move them forward on purpose.
At, Good Cycles they treat the job itself as the intervention, embedding support into paid shifts and everyday work. Each young person joins for a six-month window, and that timeframe gives every month a purpose, because both the young person and the team know the time is building toward what comes next.
Within this, support comes from multiple directions rather than one. Each young person is given a youth employment coach, who meets them regularly on paid time to set goals and work through barriers, always starting from what the young person wants. The third corner is the operational supervisor, who runs the day-to-day work, and the three meet together so that tasks and personal goals never drift apart. This triangle of support means guidance never rests on a single relationship, and it keeps the young person's own goals at the centre of everyday work.
Meanwhile, career progression is mapped as a visible ladder wherever roles allow it. In the gardening team, young people climb from Gardener Level 1 to Level 2 and on to Team Lead. They earn licences and skills at each stage. Because each young person can see the next rung from where they stand, staying becomes a way of climbing.
The ladder doesn't end at the organisation's walls, because Good Cycles builds transition pathways. Around the three-month mark, milestone reviews shift each young person's conversation from settling in to moving on.
Every participant is building towards one of several positive destinations:
- An internal supervisory or ongoing role within the organisation.
- A placement through Good Cycles' commercial relationships and contracts.
- A job in the open labour market, backed by the skills and licences earned inside.
- Further study, or a role with another social enterprise.
These pathways are real because Good Cycles is embedded in a working ecosystem. Its commercial contracts, including work delivered for the City of Melbourne, connect young people to employers who already know the program. Fellow social enterprises like Homie and STREAT have become genuine next steps, with Good Cycles participants moving on to roles within them. Each transition becomes a warm handover to an organisation expecting them, rather than a cold application to a stranger.
Together, this approach redefines retention. Good Cycles doesn't measure success by how long young people stay, but by where they go next. A good exit is treated as a retention outcome, not a failure of it. It proves that the best way to engage young people is to keep moving them forward.
Where do you stand on Engagement?
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."
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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
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