Just under a year ago (in fact, a year ago tomorrow) - I hopped on the bus from Oxford to London to attend a meeting convened by the, as yet unknown to me organisation, 'Youth Infusion'. Youth Infusion turned out to be Sarah Schulman, an intensly passionate advocate of young people's right to participate in decision making currently interning at Carnegie Young Peoples Initiative. From having little idea exactly what the meeting was about I soon discovered that for the meeting Sarah had brought together a cross-section of young youth participation 'people' from London and beyond to talk about building a 'network of consultants supporting organisations to change to involve young people beter' (even a year on I still can't express that idea in less sylables...). The meeting generated a lot of ideas - and in the months that followed, a small group, mainly driven by Sarah and Tom Burke, sought to bring those ideas together into a plan for developing that network. The ideas were inspiring, and the need identified was real. I was on board.

In the world of participation there are a lot of skills around engaging young people and working with them - but the capacity to critically support organisational change for embedding youth engagement has a lot of space for growth. And whilst effective participation work is all about connecting people, building community, supporting reflection and enabling change - so often as participation workers and consultants the space for us to be connected, in critical communities, reflecting, learning from our peers and creating critical and strategic change is lacking. Thats why I've spent many of my spare hours inbetween other work over the last three months building this online platform for 'The Enfusion Network' (as we've come to title the network...). And thats why I'm really excited that we're (soft) launching the site today - opening up the space to see how it will develop...

It's been an interesting learning journey to put together this site, and we're only at the start of it. Instead of redescribing all the different aspects of the site and how it fits into the wider network development - let me just paste in some of the e-mail we've sent out this afternoon to those who came to that first conversation in London in 2006.

We see the website as a tool for building a community of change-makers committed to youth participation and organizational change. The website allows us to create individual profiles, write blogs, participate in conversational forums, share and critique resources, and build projects with other network members. This is only the beginning. Over the months to come, we look forward to adding and enhancing the website’s features as we learn the wants and needs of our users. To do this, we need your help:

(1) Help us to build a community of reflective practical content on youth engagement. You can add content in a variety of ways:

a. Sign up as a network member and create your profile

i. Your profile can include documents and resources that you have created and want to share, showcase and get feedback on

b. Add resources, including case-studies, tools, agendas & training materials, and links to other sites

i. Simply look for the ‘Share Content’ link in the left-hand website menu.

c. Comment on existing resources

d. Write a blog about a participatory experience you have been engaged in or are currently engaged in

i. Also to be found under ‘Share Content’. If you would like to explore having a featured blog on the Enfusion Network, or would like to have a custom design for your blog, let us know.

e. Join a forum for open discussion about all things youth engagement

(2) Help us to start conversations. If you are interested in facilitating a conversation about a particular question or idea relevant to the youth participation field, set up a new space within the forum by clicking on the forum button on the top menu bar.

(3) Help us to build the network. If you’re interested in helping shape what the network looks like and how it is run, email us at enfusionnetwork@gmail.com. We’ll also be holding a conference call on March 23 to talk about next steps, particularly around the issues of ‘quality control’ and the copywriting of materials.

We recognize that because the network site is in its infancy, there many be some kinks! Please do let us know how we can improve the site, and what more you’d like to see.

The real test of the networks success will be whether we can look back in six months or a year and identify connections that it has build between participation practioners - and can identify its role in increasing the capacity of participation practioners to engage effectively with creating organisational change for youth engagement. The real test of the work I've done developing the website over the last three months is less interesting. I'm just hoping everyone will work without throwing up big error messages when (hopefully) network members start signing up over the coming days...

Fingers crossed... it's an exciting journey...