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The CoLab

The stem carries nutrients to every other part of the plant. The CoLab is an intergenerational group, half young people and half adult system leaders, that holds the shared vision and feeds it into everything else we build.

Illustration of a dragonfly

How we work together

Young people should be authors and designers of the futures we are trying to create together, not simply people adults consult along the way. These are the commitments that shape how the CoLab meets.

50/50 by design

A space that is neither majority student nor majority adult, but intentionally balanced. We keep examining what turns numerical balance into actual shared power.

Co-creation, not advisory

Young people shape the questions, the scenarios and the arc of the work, rather than reacting to decisions already made.

We name adultism

Naming it directly has helped us talk more honestly about dynamics that otherwise stay invisible. It is not something we do once and move on from.

We close the loop

People should be able to see what we did with what they gave us. And when their input doesn’t lead to a change, we say that too.

“Participation is not the same as influence. A room can be numerically balanced and still reproduce many of the dynamics we are trying to interrupt.”

Drawn from What Our Youth Partners Told Us and the August 11 CoLab brief

Meet the CoLab

Members of the California Living Labs CoLab together

[Optional caption — where and when the photo was taken.]

What the CoLab is building

The CoLab uses field intelligence from each regional Activation Lab to build frameworks for real-world change. Those become the seeds: knowledge products and policy recommendations designed to take root somewhere new.

Read what we’re learning Meet our catalytic collaborators