In February 2021, youth advocates and Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York launched a survey that collected responses from more than 1,300 young people (ages 14 to 24) across New York City. The survey was designed and distributed as part of an initiative called Voicing Our Future, a collaboration with hundreds of youth who wanted to hear from their peers on the issues that matter most to them in the build up to the 2021 municipal elections for mayor, city council, and borough president. While youth are a typically ‘hard-to-reach’ survey demographic, this project succeeded due to its inclusive design and methods of reaching young people.

Join CCC and its Youth Action Members to learn about this project’s approach to participatory research and use of SMS technology to collect data from a broad sample of youth in New York City, and promote lessons for applying this approach in other settings.