Beyond GDP: Youth Vision of Progress and Building Skills for the 2030 Agenda. Report on the Virtual Side Events to CSOCD64 and the High-Level Political Forum

This report brings together the insights and stories from two interconnected events: “Beyond GDP: The Voice of Youth in Advancing Social Development,” a Virtual Side Event to the 64th session of the United Nations Commission for Social Development (CSocD64), and “Closing the Skills Gap for the 2030 Agenda: Lessons from EU Transnational Partnerships,” a Virtual Side Event to the UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) 2026. They were held and facilitated by Think Tank AlterContacts, an NGO in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

Using live polling, open-text contributions, chat messages and facilitated breakout-room discussions, the study documents how youth articulate progress as fundamentally human-centered, beginning almost without exception with safety and extending through health, education, and work that is chosen rather than endured, with work-life balance framed not as a perk but as a right. Expert contributions argue that GDP remains a useful number but an incomplete truth, and call for shifting youth engagement from consultation to co-creation, from access to influence, and from projects to systems.

The report profiles five EU-funded Erasmus+ projects—AI4VET4AI, BlueGOV, Sustainable Ecotourism Awareness (SEA), CIRCU-TECH and GreenScope—as concrete, replicable models showing how vocational education, ocean literacy, ecotourism, circular-economy training and Earth observation skills can directly accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals and help close skills gaps in the green and digital transitions.

The final section compiles policy consultations prepared for the policymaking process—a Written Statement to the ECOSOC High-Level Segment, input to inform the 2027 Global Sustainable Development Report, and a contribution to an Elements Paper for the Intergovernmental Process on Beyond GDP—illustrating how youth ideas and education partnerships can support a transition from isolated actions to systemic change.