The Seeds Need Water! Democracy is under threat worldwide, and youth work is at the heart of the response. The Democracy in Action: Youth Work Matters! conference, held in Strasbourg in December 2025 highlighted the urgent threats to youth work and its critical role in upholding democratic values. Key challenges that directly affect youth work include: • Repression of Civil Society: Youth work, as part of civil society, is directly impacted by the global decline in democratic freedoms. Anti-democratic forces are increasingly targeting civil society, making it harder for youth work to operate. • Economic Shifts: Democracies now hold less economic power than a decade ago, a trend accelerated by geopolitical changes, such as the second Trump administration in 2025. This has worsened funding shortages, especially in countries reliant on international donors. • The Deliberate Distortion of Meaning: Anti-democratic groups are co-opting terms like "democracy" and "human rights," forcing youth work—traditionally non-partisan—to take a clearer stance on these politicized issues. The participants shared best practices that showed the importance of strengthening local youth work, including through international collaboration, addressing diverse and relevant topics such as trauma- sensitivity and political aspects of the digital world, and ensuring the sustainability of long-term projects for greater impact. In the concluding session, participants offered their ideas on how to react to current challenges and chaired a wide variety of sessions: from the presentation of concrete facilitation methods to co-creative project planning, and the transfer of knowledge from the youth council in one autocratic country to the youth council of another country. These seeds must be watered. Different speakers at the conference underscored the urgent need for civil society, including youth work, to actively defend democracy and preserve democratic spaces for young people. While the importance of civil society in fostering democratic resilience is widely recognized, it is also increasingly targeted and suppressed by anti-democratic forces. Organizations and actors responsible for resource allocation must recognize this challenge and establish support systems for youth work that promotes democracy. Evidence from recent years shows that international efforts to strengthen civil society have been pivotal in reversing democratic decline in many countries. At the conference, an inspiring example with a long history was shared: The Danish Youth Council, which was founded in occupied Denmark in the 1940s, has a government mandate and provides structural and project funding to its member organisations as well as to international partners. This historical example with its enduring positive impact offers two lessons. The first lesson offers hope: youth work today draws on a long and rich tradition of experiences and enjoys the support of allies in democratic countries. The second lesson reminds us of an important task, as captured eloquently by John Dewey in Democracy and Education : "Democracy must be born anew every generation. Education is its midwife." Youth work, as a form of education, plays a vital role in nurturing democracy, much like a
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