WSA Where Are They Now? – Buzzly Showing Young People Are Ready to Engage
The Problem: Outdated Engagement
Young people are not disengaged. They are often disengaged from the way institutions ask them to participate.
That is one of the clearest lessons to come out of Buzzly - 2024 World Summit Award Winner.
For too long, the story has been that youth do not care about government, consultation, or civic issues. But that explanation is a bit too tidy. It ignores a harder truth: many engagement processes still feel outdated, formal, and built for another generation.
Long forms. Dense documents. Rigid submission formats. It is not exactly a warm invitation.
Buzzly was built on a different idea — that if participation feels more accessible, creative, and genuine, rangatahi will respond. And they do.
That has been proven through Buzzly’s work with Watercare, where young people were invited to share their views on Auckland’s water future.
The Insight: Young People Are Ready
This was not a light topic. It involved long-term planning, infrastructure, sustainability, and climate resilience. The kind of subject many people assume would not interest young people.
But the response told a different story.
The campaign received 88 submissions, with an average response length of 174 words. Young people shared thoughtful ideas about water conservation, wastewater, climate change, and future planning.
One participant wrote that Auckland needs to think “50 years ahead, not just 5 years,” and make sure infrastructure can adapt to climate change and population growth.
Another said water is about much more than drinking supply — it is about rivers, oceans, agriculture, and the future of the environment.
The insight was serious, informed, and values-driven.
For Buzzly, that reinforces something important: the problem was never a lack of youth voice. The problem was expecting young people to speak through systems that do not fit them.
Buzzly allows rangatahi to respond in different ways, including text, video, voice, and images. That flexibility matters. It opens the door to more honest, more natural, and more meaningful participation.
It also sends a message: you do not have to sound like a policy expert to be taken seriously.
That shift changes everything. It changes who participates. It changes what they say. And it changes how institutions hear them.
Internal feedback from Watercare described Buzzly as a safe, youth-led platform that generated diverse perspectives and valuable insights into how young people think and communicate. The results were described as “fantastic.”
That matters because trust is not built only by asking young people to speak. It is built by showing that what they say has value.
Buzzly’s experience points to a simple truth: young people are ready to engage. The real question is whether institutions are ready to meet them differently.
Because maybe youth were never the problem. Maybe the invitation was.
