In India, the youth learn how to design interventions in their own neighbourhoods to combat sexual violence, and in Brazil, young people from favelas use technology to document police violence and disseminate their perspectives on the social and political situation in their country.

All over the world, the youth are key to a society in fostering not only positive social, political and cultural changes but economic change as well. A variety of approaches and tools try to harness the potential of young people – often without considering their real needs and without empowering them to bring about change themselves. This compendium of essays explores the role young people can play as actors of change and how international governments and institutions can effectively manage and take advantage of the demographic dividend.

‘Demographic dividend’ is a term coined by Harvard economists David Bloom and David Canning to represent the boost in economic growth that can result from changes in a country's population age structure. As fertility rates decrease, a country's working-age population grows larger relative to the young dependent population. With more people in the labour force and fewer children to support, a country has a window of opportunity for rapid economic growth if the right social and economic investments and policies are made in health, education, governance and the economy. Conversely, research shows that resource requirements to support a large population of children and youth can depress the pace of economic growth and prevent needed investments in human capital.

The discourse on responding to this population growth frequently excludes the youth. The result can be an apathetic community of young people who withdraw from participation in political and democratic processes. In their chapters for this collection, members of the Global Diplomacy Lab (GDL) as well as associated experts from various continents address the issue and highlight solutions from different parts of the world and thus provide transferable approaches to promote, enhance and contribute to harvesting the demographic dividend.

The GDL is a think-do tank founded in Berlin to turn diplomacy on its head by involving non-state and non-traditional actors and utilising non-traditional methodologies for framing discussions. There is a need to systematically make diplomacy more inclusive and open what was previously a comparably closed realm of career diplomats, policymakers and academic think tanks to deepen exchange, innovation and co-creation with other actors.