Posted in ASU news, News on Oct 08, 2026.
Last week, Storying Just Futures (SJF) brought a youth-centered approach to policymaking to UNESCO Headquarters in Paris during MOST Social Transformations Week.
During the Create the Change workshop session, SJF Fellows presented the Caring Communities/Storying Just Futures toolkit, a pre-policy approach designed to bring youth voices, lived experience, and community knowledge into the earliest stages of policymaking, and to support young people in designing the futures they want to see for themselves and future generations.
The toolkit comprised two tools:
(1) The Force Map: The Force Map helps youth examine issues they experience through the lens of what is visible versus hidden, and what aspects of an issue arise from within their community versus outside of it.
(2) The Local Action Plan: By breaking down larger objectives into actionable steps, the plan enables youth to identify their capabilities within three-month, six-month, and one-year timeframes. Youth are also encouraged to identify key individuals who can provide guidance and support, such as school administrators or city council members, and appropriate channels for communicating with them.
To support implementation, the Local Action Plan recommends identifying a youth representative from the community who can help monitor progress and facilitate communication between youth and the identified stakeholders.
The session connected directly with the week’s central question: What should count as policy-relevant evidence? Across the UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Coalition workshops, participants discussed how foresight, the humanities, Indigenous and local knowledge, and lived experience can help governments understand complex challenges and design better responses.
We are especially grateful to the SJF Fellows, Neha Chhetri, Kimia Lavasani, Trevor Morris, Arina Melkozernova, Mohadeseh Mousazadeh Miandehi, Gad Sezirahiga, In Soo Kim, Ema Santos Quiroz, Laura Randall, Margaret Chilinda, and Zhiqiang Liu, whose collaborative work transformed the ideas developed through the fellowship into the Caring Communities/Storying Just Futures toolkit presented in Paris. We are grateful to the UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Coalition for creating space for this exchange and to Create the Change and Sally Kitch for supporting this work and our Fellows’ travel.
Special thanks to Dr. Joni Adamson, whose leadership, mentorship, and vision have guided Storying Just Futures from its beginnings and continue to shape its direction. Storying Just Futures has grown through the collective work of its core team, including Sreya Ann Oommen, Liron Arieli, Jennifer Richter, Indulata Prasad, and Edauri Navarro-Perez, whose contributions have helped develop and guide the initiative. We are also grateful to Giovanna Di Chiro and Denise Moreno Ramírez for sharing their insights with the Fellows during the SJF Convergence.
We return from Paris excited to continue this work and help more communities shape the futures they want to inhabit.
Learn more about Storying Just Futures
