The Copenhagen Consensus 2008 Youth Forum is a parallel meeting to the Expert meeting. The objective of the Youth Forum is to include the global youth; the decision-makers of tomorrow, in the process in order for their input to complement the Expert Panels’ ranked list of solutions. The overall objective of the Youth Forum is therefore to listen to a group of young future decision makers from around the world and having them voice what solutions they believe should be given. The vision of the Youth Forum is to contribute to an open, public debate on how to prioritize solutions to ten of the most pressing challenges. The Youth Forum event will also be open to the general public and to journalists, while the Expert Panel event will be a closed meeting. This will give the press an opportunity to witness the process of the entire project and provide them with more material to report on.

The process of ranking the solutions culminates in a four-day meeting, during which the Challenge Paper authors and the Perspective Paper authors present the results of their work to the Youth Forum. The Youth Forum will meet in open sessions. Each member of the Youth Forum will make an individual ranking of the solutions, giving a prioritized answer to the question:

If the world would come together and be willing to spend, say, $75 billion additionally over the next four years on improving the state of the world, which solutions would yield the greatest net benefits?

As the Youth Forum participants are going through the same exercise as the Expert Panel, the outcome of the Youth Forum will also be a prioritized list of solutions, which will supplement the list from the Expert Panel. The Youth Forum ranked list will be made public at a press conference on the 29th of May.

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