 A large problem facing youth development today is the great chasm which exists between top-down policy formation and the actual reality of the youth situation. What this process lacks is a meaningful platform for youth to discover and discuss issues relevant to them, so as to better engage in meaningful dialogue with policymakers.
The Youth Open Space Dialogue Series is born out of a recognition that international organizations such as the World Bank need to do much more to listen to and incorporate the voices of youth into their policies and operations. The World Bank and more than 30 development partners, including UNICEF, local NGOs and relevant government ministries, have been organizing youth Open Space dialogue sessions across the East Asia and Pacific region since June 2006.
 To date, sessions have taken place in Port Moresby, Phnom Penh, Dili, Singapore, Vientiane, Ulaanbaatar, and Bangkok, with approximately 1300 youth participants. A few more sessions are expected to take place by November 2006. Some of these sessions are targeted particularly at disadvantaged, or “at risk” youth, while others are targeted at the general youth population.
All of these sessions recognize that youth have a keen interest in their future and need avenues to voice their issues, concerns, aspirations, and ideas.
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What is Open Space Technology (OST)?
 The key in this form of dialogue is that there is no pre-determined agenda, but only a general theme. The participants themselves are the ones who set the agenda at the beginning of the first session by, one by one, grabbing a marker and piece of paper from the center of the room, and scribbling on it whatever it is their main question, idea, or issue they have relating to the theme.
Each participant then announces his/her agenda item to the circle, before sticking it on the wall, with a post-it note stating the time and place where the item will be discussed. Anyone else who is interested may join this discussion. One person in each discussion will take brief notes and all session outcome notes will be compiled into a booklet which is printed for all participants to take home with them.
This way, and particularly when the number of participants is high, many theme-related issues can be discussed over a relatively short period of time. And even if each participant has the chance to attend just a few discussions, the booklet that compiles the session outcomes provides them with the summary of all of them. It is indeed an encyclopaedia of all the brainstorming done during the sessions.
Open Spaces sessions can convene anywhere between 5 and 2,000 people.
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