WHO PAYS FOR YOUTH SILENCE?
In Poland, young people are allowed to speak — but only as long as they do not inconvenience those in power. Today, funding for youth organizations depends more on political alignment than on the quality of projects or real social needs. This creates a quiet mechanism of politicization that, instead of fostering active citizens, produces compliant grant recipients. If we want a functioning democracy, we must guarantee young people financial and institutional independence.
In theory, the Youth Fund is meant to support grassroots initiatives. In practice, it is administered by the National Freedom Institute — an institution fully dependent on the government. Transparent evaluation criteria, appeals mechanisms, and public oversight are lacking.
A report by the Supreme Audit Office (NIK) identified irregularities amounting to tens of millions of złoty, pointing to cases of unreliable and unlawful evaluation of applications. Organizations that do not “fit” ideologically are simply denied support (Supreme Audit Office, 2023). As a result, youth NGOs either disappear from the public sphere or enter informal alliances with those in power. Diversity is replaced by conformity. As one activist put it: “either you play their game, or you don’t play at all” (Dudkiewicz, 2024).
In Germany, the Federal Youth Council (DBJR) manages funding independently from political actors. Its budget exceeded €219 million in 2020, and organizations applying for support are assessed solely on the basis of formal and substantive criteria defined by law (European Commission YouthWiki, 2024).
In the Nordic countries, youth organizations are treated as equal partners to the state, and their funding is based on long-term institutional agreements independent of electoral cycles. In Norway and Finland, for example, public expenditure reaches 48% and 56% of GDP respectively (Corporate Finance Institute, 2024).
This is not a story about ideal democracies — these are systems that work because someone had the courage to trust young people. Youth do not disappear when funding is withdrawn. They disappear from institutional forms of participation. What remains is frustration, TikTok, and the streets.
Globally, 86% of young people live in developing countries, and in Poland youth (aged 15–29) make up around 20% of the population. They will shape the future — either as informed citizens or as a generation raised to believe that politics is a closed club (Statistics Poland, 2025; Central Statistical Office, 2024).
ILO research shows that every 1% increase in spending on youth programs translates into a 0.3% increase in productivity over five years. Investing in young people is not a cost, it is a long-term dividend (International Labour Office, 2024).
Is every youth organization perfect? Of course not. Should every organization receive funding? No. But the current system does not filter for quality — it filters for loyalty.
This is not about giving everyone the same. It is about giving everyone a fair chance. If we care about a democracy that goes beyond elections, we must start from the foundations. And those foundations are young people — not as “problematic beneficiaries” of funding, but as equal co-creators of the state.
That is why it is time to introduce legal guarantees for apolitical funding of youth organizations. Otherwise, we will continue to watch democracy reduced to a façade, while young people keep knocking on doors no one intends to open.