Chapter 3: A Global Youth Deliberation and their International Youth Position Paper on Global Citizenship

This chapter describes an international deliberation among youth aged 16–18 and its published policy position paper, the International Youth White Paper on Global Citizenship (2017), in order to identify definitions and practices of global citizenship and global citizenship education and to make policy recommendations for UNESCO, local and national schools, and universities. Seldom are youth invited to contribute to the development of policy goals or curriculums in any serious or in-depth way. Our hope was to develop a model to change that by working with youth in an intensive, 8-month online deliberation to understand their experiences, concerns, and recommendations about citizenship, education and the world. In this chapter, we describe the project development and implementation, the recommendations from the youth, and our own reflective analysis of engaging in what ended up to be a powerful and transformational global citizenship education activity.