In 1997 the Carnegie UK Trust opened its Carnegie Young People Initiative in London. This was the first independent specialist national research and development centre promoting the policy and practice of youth participation across the UK. For ten years Carnegie funded over 150 local youth participation projects, increasingly young-people led, together with research, publications, training, learning exchanges, the creation of national and regional networks for youth participation practitioners, and provided advice to the UK Government departments and the Devolved Administrations.
Carnegie closed CYPI in 2007, having played a leading role convening the consortium that established Participation Works and transferring some of its staff. CYPI has been succeeded by a new Carnegie programme supporting democracy and civil society. As a record of the Trust’s decade of support for youth participation, the Trust has published its final report Empowering Young People. The report reviews the successes and failures over the past decade, together with some ideas for action for the coming years to sustain and strengthen the voice of young people in decision-making. The report will be launched at the Participation Works conference on 20 February, and is available free from the Trust.