Youth advisory board
A space for voice, agency, and collaboration
The Youth Advisory Board sits at the heart of Seen and Heard as a space where young people actively shape the direction of the project.
More than participation, this is collaboration. Members of the Board contribute their perspectives, experiences, and insights to ongoing conversations about children’s rights, storytelling, and freedom of expression.
Not being spoken for, but speaking with—and being listened to.
Why a Youth Advisory Board?
The Seen and Heard project is grounded in the belief that young people are not only participants in research and culture, but contributors to knowledge and change.
The Youth Advisory Board ensures that this principle is lived in practice. It creates a structure through which young people can influence decisions, challenge assumptions, and help shape the questions we ask.
What the Board does
Board members are involved across different aspects of the project, including:
- contributing to the development of research ideas and themes
- responding to and shaping ongoing work
- participating in workshops, creative practices, and events
- advising on how to communicate with and reach wider youth audiences
Their role is not fixed, but evolving—responding to the needs of the project and the interests of the young people themselves.
A space for exchange and growth
Participation in the Youth Advisory Board is also a space of learning and connection. Through dialogue, creative work, and shared reflection, members engage with ideas around rights, identity, and social change.
They develop confidence in expressing their views, working collaboratively, and influencing processes that extend beyond the project itself.
A space to think, to question, and to create—together.
Working differently
The Youth Advisory Board reflects a wider commitment within Seen and Heard to work differently. This includes:
- valuing lived experience alongside academic knowledge
- creating environments of trust, care, and respect
- allowing space for uncertainty, creativity, and emergence
- recognising young people as partners in shaping outcomes
Rather than a symbolic gesture, the Board is part of an ongoing effort to embed meaningful participation into the fabric of the project.
Connected to a wider movement
The work of the Youth Advisory Board connects directly to the broader aims of Seen and Heard—including research, creative outputs, and public engagement.
It contributes to a growing, value-based approach to social change in which young people’s voices are not only included, but central.
To find out more or join the Board, please write to: [email protected]
Meet the Youth Advisory Board
Amy Calleja (22)
Amy Calleja is a MSc. Eng Computer Science and Engineering student at the Technical University of Denmark and works in the field of Quantum Cybersecurity. She has a longstanding interest in youth rights and young people’s freedom of expression, currently serving in multiple youth organisations at both national and international levels. Amy is the Advocacy Officer within the National Youth Council of Malta (KNŻ), leading national-level advocacy campaigns representing the interests of 50+ diverse member organisations to government ministries and EU stakeholders. She was IAESTE Malta’s National Secretary from 2022-24, and formed part of the IAESTE Connect Region Management Team from 2023 to 2026. Amy has also represented the voice of Maltese youth internationally at several events, including the EU Youth Conference in Alicante, the Council of Europe Training Course for Human Rights & Democracy, and the ASEF Young Leaders Summit 2025, in Osaka, Japan.
Malta
Ruby Peresso (19)
Ruby Peresso is a student at Royal Holloway University of London, reading for a BA (Hons.) in English. She is interested in human rights and community development and the ways in which storytelling can help to bring people together. She has interned at Heritage Malta, assisting on an educational outreach programme for children, participated in EU funded projects such as ‘Where To? Stories of Migration and Belonging’, and volunteered at institutions such as Angela House in Malta, where she spent time with children in care, helping them to complete their schoolwork. Ruby is currently assisting the Maltese academic team in conducting research and running the mentoring programme for the Seen and Heard Project.
Malta
Sarah Farrugia (31)
Sarah Farrugia (Bachelor of Arts in English and Psychology (Melit.) & Postgraduate Diploma in Education – English) is a teacher with over a decade of experience, having initially started her career in the TEFL sector teaching adults.
The contrast between teaching adults and children has made her acutely aware of the significance of the holistic education of the child and the invaluable part that adults and the community as a whole play when it comes to the safeguarding of the rights of the child. This is an issue that especially hits home, having recently become a mother herself. Thus, as the worlds of mother, educator and current MA student (Literary Studies in English) collide, Sarah was keen to participate in the Seen and Heard Project as part of the organising committee.
Sarah has also recently become a published poet with her debut poem ‘War Face’ published in the Maltese anthology ‘Songs of Motherhood Volume III’. Sarah also recently participated in a consultation panel on a governmental scale involving miscarriage leave in Malta.
Malta
