In addition to the core YExLS, we also custom build mini-labs for hosts — usually to occur before or after the core YExLS. These activities are frequently immersive, gamified, built on experiential learning, and designed to highlight specific takeaways, to help fashion specific, workable solutions, and/or for skill building.
Previous mini-labs have included:
Choose your adventure style games designed to help explain new finance structures for child welfare and juvenile justices systems.
Futurists activities (informed by the youth-led report On the Threshold of Change)
Work planning sessions focused on specific issues that arise in YExLS sessions
Skill building activities on constructing cross-interests policy ideas (or pitches) developed in collaboration with the Child Friendly Justice European Network (CFJ-EN). (Game pieces available here for download and use).
We also have a YExLS board game developed in collaboration with the Stu/dio Game Studies and Design at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Great to play in conjunction with a core YExLS or alone with a small group interested in youth systems issues.
Interested in hosting a YExLS + mini-lab? Or working with us to develop a mini-lab for your group? Contact us!