YLab exists to design better systems and services with young people. We know that organisations are looking for more meaningful ways to engage young people as legitimate design partners, and young people are eager to contribute their brilliant ideas and insights to the design of services and systems they interact with on a daily basis.
YLab is a co-design and consulting social enterprise that brings young people with diverse lived experiences and partners together to co-design solutions in the health, employment and education systems.
Clients hire YLab when faced with a youth engagement challenge, or a challenge that requires youth-led innovation. We’ve hired and trained over 150 young people aged 15+ from all across Australia who have diverse lived experiences and technical skills. We train them up in co-design, social impact, systems thinking and consulting skills and match them to the problem your organisation is trying to solve.
YLab was created by the Foundation for Young Australians in 2016 and we are certified by Social Traders as a social enterprise.
Our focus on justice
We have a strong focus on intersectional justice and First Nations self-determination and know that young people facing multiple and compounding experiences of injustice hold many of the insights and answers on how our systems and services can improve.
We exist to bring young people and institutions together to co-design better systems and services that deliver on young people’s visions for the future.
To do this, we engage, train and employ young people across Australia from many different backgrounds, cultures, identities and lived experiences in co-design. We connect them to work alongside institutions to design and deliver systems and services that are truly fit for purpose.
We work not only to build the capabilities of young people but to also shift the mindsets of institutions to value young people and genuinely share power with them as collaborators.
In delivering on our purpose, we will see outdated systems decline and new systems and services emerge that better meet the needs of young people.
We are working to build a workforce of young people thriving in the gig economy, bringing fresh perspectives, to design the future. We tackle inequality by placing young people with different lived experiences and technical expertise at the centre of re-generating institutions in every sector and every system.
We put YLab Associates, young people with lived experience and clients together to solve complex problems.
We give young people a leg up by providing immersive, relevant and practical learning and training experiences.
We put young people at the centre of designing and implementing strategies within organisations and across systems.
We provide a platform for young Mob to be agents for change in creating new self-determined solutions.
We make content that reaches out and reflects young people. Our creative services include video production, creative direction, editorial, copywriting, marketing, and design.
We find out what young people want and need to navigate an uncertain future.
We give young people a leg up by providing immersive, relevant and practical learning and training experiences.
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