Young people education and engagement plan 2025–27

Our work on the Young people education and engagement plan 2025–27 (YPEEP) is shaped by the 2 governing documents outlined below.

Strategy 2027

Strategy 2027 sets VEC objectives until 2027. It reflects the dynamic and complex environment we work in and responds to new challenges including:

  • changes to the law
  • changes to the way people expect elections to run, including using technology
  • misinformation and disinformation across the media landscape and their impact on political views
  • decreasing trust in democratic systems
  • increasing threats to our systems and applications and a need for better cybersecurity.

The strategy has 4 thematic areas that guide our work and help address these challenges:

  • Trust – we are trusted to deliver electoral services with integrity and high quality.
  • Voters – we deliver a great voter experience.
  • Processes and systems – our processes and systems respond to a complex environment.
  • Wellbeing – our people are capable, engaged and satisfied.

These themes inform the goals and actions of our education and engagement plans.

Inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility (IDEA) framework

We are committed to providing inclusive and accessible services to Victorians and creating a workplace that reflects the diverse communities we serve. We aim to foster respect and prevent all forms of discrimination, harassment, and violence.

We are developing an IDEA framework which will explain how we will work with people of all ages, genders, sexualities, abilities, ethnicities, cultures, religions and socio-economic backgrounds. Our IDEA framework will build on our previous diversity and inclusion framework to increase trust in the VEC through recognising and celebrating diversity.

The VEC has a history of championing inclusion through initiatives such as our democracy ambassador program. The IDEA framework will support the goals of our education and engagement plans to help our staff and communities thrive.

Goals of the YPEEP

True democracy must include everyone. Worldwide trends show lower voter turnout in people aged 18 to 29. At the 2022 Victorian state election, turnout was almost 2% lower in this age group than at the 2018 state election. The growth of mis- and dis- information also contributes to a difficult experience for first-time voters.

We developed the YPEEP with our YPAG and a variety of partners and youth stakeholders. The goals in this plan show our continued work to establish lifelong patterns of voting for young Victorians. We focus our work on 17- and 18-year-olds enrolling for the first time and young people up to the age of 29 who are voting in their first elections.

To improve electoral participation for young Victorians we must:

  • consider them when planning and delivering electoral programs and services
  • give them more opportunities to enrol, vote, and engage
  • increase education and engagement activities.

The YPEEP has 3 focus areas:

  • access
  • knowledge and confidence
  • relationships, visibility and representation.

The actions we will take to achieve these goals are outlined under the headings below.

Access

To improve young people’s access to electoral services and processes we will:

improve support and engagement of young people across our communication channels and partner organisations

review our 17-year-old enrolment birthday program to encourage young people to enrol before they turn 18

implement an advertising campaign to increase young people’s awareness of the 2026 state election.

Knowledge and confidence

To improve young people’s electoral knowledge and confidence we will:

  • increase enrolment and voting information and resources across VEC channels
  • deliver outreach and education to teachers, educators and youth workers
  • provide electoral education to younger voters outside school settings
  • encourage the early formation of positive voting behaviour by developing young people’s civic knowledge and skills within youth organisations
  • identify, develop and strengthen partnerships with youth organisations.

Relationships, visibility, and representation

To increase stakeholder relationships, and young people’s visibility and representation in electoral matters we will:

  • maintain relationships with the YPAG, youth stakeholders and young people, seeking their advice and offering support
  • recruit, train, and support young people to work as democracy ambassadors
  • work with youth organisations and attend youth events to provide services in priority areas
  • offer outreach education in homelessness services for young people and identify gaps in electoral resources for this group.

YPEEP outcomes

At the end of this YPEEP, some of the outcomes we hope to see are:

  • young people feeling more engaged in electoral processes and democracy
  • ore young people (aged 17+) knowing how to enrol and vote
  • more young people (aged 17+) feeling confident to enrol and vote
  • an increased number of eligible young people enrolled to vote
  • an increased rate of voting among eligible young people
  • improvements in our engagement, visibility and representation from youth stakeholders
  • youth stakeholders with more awareness and understanding of our work and the importance of electoral participation for young people
  • youth stakeholders more likely to help young people participate in electoral processes.

Measuring the success of the YPEEP

The Electoral Commissioner, the VEC Executive Management Group and staff are responsible for making sure we achieve the actions in the YPEEP.

We will maintain a progress report for the YPEEP and invite feedback twice a year from the YPAG. We will also publish a yearly progress summary in our VEC annual reports.

This education and engagement plan is guided by its own program logic. The monitoring and evaluation plan includes measures and targets, using data from various sources that we report quarterly, annually and for elections.

For a copy of the program logic, or monitoring and evaluation plan, please contact education@vec.vic.gov.au

Young People Advisory Group

The YPEEP was developed in collaboration with the Young People Advisory Group (YPAG). This group also provides us with feedback and ideas to improve our electoral engagement with young people.

The YPAG includes young people and the following youth sector service providers:

  • Parliament of Victoria
  • Foundation for Young Australians
  • Youth Afairs Council Victoria
  • YMCA Victoria.