In 2025, the Camden Community Wealth Fund ran a £2 million pilot to explore what happens when young people hold genuine power in an investment process. Over 18 months, a Youth Panel of 15 young people co-designed an investment strategy, assessed applications, carried out due diligence, and made final investment recommendations. This report shares what we learnt.
What we did
We recruited 15 young people from Camden with different lived experiences, some with significant barriers, including unemployment, care experience, and involvement with the youth justice system. The team worked intensively with them across all stages of a real investment fund. They were paid, supported, and treated as decision-makers throughout.
What was achieved
- 15 panellists, 130 hours of sessions across 45 panel sessions
- A co-designed investment fund strategy centred on three impact areas
- £1.04 million of investments recommended across 7 organisations
- Panel confidence in making investment decisions nearly doubled (4.8 to 8.6 out of 10 in levels of confidence)
What we learnt
With the right conditions, young people with no prior investment experience can make informed investment decisions. This is our central finding. Across the programme they were are able to co-design a fund, assess investment proposals, deliberate together and shape a real portfolio. The impact on them on individuals was also significant.
The harder lessons were about what it takes. Deep participatory investment draws on investment practice, participation design, and trauma-informed youth work simultaneously, and requires all to be properly resourced. Governance boundaries, institutional systems, and team composition all matter as much as the sessions themselves.
Headline insights
- Young people can hold genuine decision-making power from investment strategy design, through to investment decisions.
- Young people without prior investment knowledge can make informed investment decisions, and the process shaped them in ways that extended well beyond the fund.
- Real discussion and debate happened well. This needed strong facilitation, one-to-one support, psychological safety and active learning.
- Participatory investment works best when participants are paid, supported, informed and treated as the decision-makers they are.
- Participatory investment works when everyone is clear from the start about who decides what, although some boundaries only emerge through first time delivery.
- Power was genuinely shared with young people, but different people in the process had different understandings of what that meant in practice.
- Participatory investment sits at the intersection of two disciplines that don't naturally fit together. That tension has to be designed for.
- Deep participation across the investment lifecycle is possible, but it needs far more people, time and resource than a standard fund.
- The investment team took on roles beyond those typical in investment. This stretched capacity, reducing resources for core investment activity and had an impact on getting money out the door.
- The Youth Panel created unexpected value for entrepreneurs beyond the investment decisions.
- Participatory investment can make the process harder for entrepreneurs and that tension needs to be designed around.
- The fund demonstrated Camden's Youth Mission in action. The evidence for deeper impact will follow.
- Camden Council backing made the fund possible. Everyday systems affected pace and the panel experience
The report contains full insights and key recommendations for funders, commissioners, and participation practitioners.
