National Youth Engagement Toolkit

This resource is the National Youth Engagement Toolkit. It was created through a twelve-month Community of Practice involving more than thirty youth and social enterprise organisations across Australia, who shared what genuinely works when engaging young people in the sector.

The toolkit breaks youth engagement into six stages: awareness, attraction, recruitment, onboarding, engagement and retention. Awareness is about young people discovering opportunities through channels they already trust. Attraction is about making an opportunity feel relevant and worth saying yes to, often through fair pay and meaningful work rather than excitement alone. Recruitment focuses on removing hidden barriers, like CVs and jargon, that quietly exclude young applicants. Onboarding builds confidence and belonging in the first days of a role. Engagement is about everyday psychological safety and real ownership over tasks. Retention is about visible pathways, growing responsibility and support that continues even after a young person moves on.

For each stage, the toolkit sets out common challenges organisations face, guiding insights drawn from the sector, concrete strategies to try, a real-world case study, and a self-assessment checklist. Readers will come away with a practical framework for diagnosing where their organisation is strong or weak, plus specific, low-cost actions they can test immediately, such as offering multiple ways to apply, running quarterly goal conversations, or building peer support networks.

This resource is most useful for leaders and staff at social enterprises and youth-focused organisations who want to improve how they attract, recruit and retain young people, as well as funders and policymakers interested in what genuine youth-centred practice looks like across the sector.