We are not waiting

​You are already leading. Now put it on the record.

Across the world, young people are building fairer, more sustainable futures through community organising, ecological restoration, cultural work, technological creativity and social innovation. This anthology exists to document and share that work to put it into the centre of the conversation and ideas about systemic change and innovation.

We Are Not Waiting is an open-access anthology co-produced by The 50 Percent at the Club of Rome and the UNESCO–MOST BRIDGES UK Hub. It is a youth-led anthology that will bring together approximately 18 contributions from young practitioners aged 14–35 who are actively working on one of the six themes below. You do not need to be an academic or a professional writer. You need to be doing the work.

We are looking for contributions grounded in real experience and action.

Who can submit

This call is open to anyone aged 14 to 35 at the time of submission. You do not need academic credentials or institutional affiliation. What matters is that your contribution is grounded in lived experience and reflects genuine engagement with the theme you are writing to.

You may submit as an individual or as part of a small team. If you are submitting as a team, all contributing authors must meet the age requirement.

Submissions from entrants aged 18 and under must be submitted by an adult (e.g. parent/guardian or teacher) on behalf of the entrant. The adult should provide their own contact details when submitting.

What to submit

We are inviting abstracts of no more than 500 words. Your abstract should do four things:

• Describe the initiative, project or practice you are writing about and the context in which it operates.
• Explain what makes this work distinct: what does it challenge, refuse or offer that existing approaches do not?
• Indicate how your contribution will be grounded in concrete examples, not only arguments.
• Reflect on and describe what you and your communities have learned, and how this work has impacted broader systemic change.

Abstracts should be written in clear, accessible language. You do not need to use academic or institutional terminology. Contributions from the Global Majority and indigenous communities are especially encouraged.

Successful submissions will be invited to develop a full contribution of approximately 2,000 words for inclusion in the anthology. Authors will receive editorial support throughout the process.

Submissions from entrants aged 18 and under must be submitted by an adult (e.g. parent/guardian or teacher) on behalf of the entrant. Please submit the child’s details and the adult’s contact details in one submission.

Themes

Abstracts are invited across the following 6 Themes

1. Re-weaving the future: networks and economies that make the world anew

Projects and practices that build regenerative, community-centred economies. We are looking for contributions that show how young people are redesigning systems of exchange, value and resource-sharing with a relational, not merely technical, logic lens.

2. Building resilience through ecological resistance and restoration

Stories of climate justice activism and ecological restoration that centre resistance and relationship. Contributions should reflect on what it means to defend and renew the living world, not simply manage it.

3. Living circular futures: small changes, big difference

Concrete, practice-oriented contributions on circular and low-impact innovation. We are looking for examples that show what it actually means to adapt our way forward, from the local and personal to the systemic.

4. Between fracture and repair: youth-led peacebuilding and social cohesion

Work that holds both the political and the intimate dimensions of building peace. We welcome contributions that speak to stories of freedom and the everyday practice of repairing fractured communities.

5. Communities of care: youth-led networks built on solidarity, not charity

Contributions that demonstrate the difference between mutual aid and charitable giving. The editorial lens here is community over individuality: how are young people building structures of care that do not replicate dependency?

6. Stories that move systems: art, culture and storytelling as tools for transformation

Contributions that show how creative practice, narrative and cultural work function as instruments of systems change, not only as illustration or accompaniment to it.

About LLM/AI Use

We will receive a lot of abstracts and contributions. Although there is no perfect AI detection tool, due to the volume of submissions that need to be reviewed, the editors are likely to notice patterns in diction, tone and ideas presented that can make an otherwise good submission seem uncreative or uninspired. For that reason, AI submissions are likely to receive a lower grade than those that have not used AI. Here are our guidelines below:

The use of AI language models to draft, substantially revise, or generate sections of your submission is not advised.

This call for abstracts exists to surface original thinking and innovation. It is a search for your creativity and perspectives, not for a language model’s approximation of them.

You may use AI tools for the following limited purposes only: checking grammar and spelling; formatting references; translating source material from languages other than English; and generating initial literature searches that you then verify independently. If authors use AI in their contributions, we require an AI declaration to be added. The declaration should state the model name and version, the purposes for which it would be used, and a declaration that all relevant data and references have been independently checked by the author(s).

AI declaration: (Insert model name) was used in the preparation of this contribution for the purposes of (X, Y and Zs). All data and references have been fact-checked and verified by the author(s).

Example:

AI declaration: Claude Sonnet 4.6 was used in the preparation of this contribution for the purposes of initial research and copy-editing the final text. All data and references have been fact-checked and verified by the author(s).

About the partners

The 50 Percent at the Club of Rome works to place youth leadership at the centre of systems change. It supports and amplifies the work of young people who are already building the transitions that older institutions are still debating.

The UNESCO–MOST BRIDGES UK Hub generates humanities-informed research from the ground up, working with inclusive knowledge systems to drive social transformation and inform policy and practice.