A research lens on participation and governance.
PARALLAX is a youth-led civic research initiative exploring how perspective shapes public decision-making and how young people can move from being consulted to being included. Through interviews, research, and governance frameworks, we study how youth perspectives become civic influence.
What PARALLAX means
In astronomy, parallax is the apparent shift in a star's position when observed from two different points. The star itself does not move — perspective does.
PARALLAX applies that idea to civic life. Policies look one way from the institutions that write them and another way from the young people who live under them. Studying that difference is the foundation of our research.
What PARALLAX studies
PARALLAX studies youth participation, leadership, education, governance, and global affairs — and how perspective shapes the decisions made about young people's lives.
Our work is organized around three core areas: The Listening Project, a global research effort documenting youth perspectives; Research Reports, a publication hub for our findings; and the Co-Author Initiative, a governance and policy research program developing a framework for moving young people from consultation to co-authorship.
Research before frameworks
PARALLAX begins with listening. Interviews and structured reflections gather the qualitative evidence that anchors every subsequent step — published reports, comparative analysis, and the design of governance frameworks.
We are a research initiative, not a campaign. We do not publish draft legislation, petitions, or policy demands. The work is sequenced so that recommendations, when they arrive, sit on a documented evidence base.
Chi Do
High school student researcher & civic advocate
Chi Do is a student researcher and civic advocate interested in youth participation, governance, and international affairs. Through experiences in Model United Nations, student leadership, and civic education, she became interested in how young people engage with decision-making processes and how institutions can move beyond consultation toward meaningful participation.
She founded PARALLAX to explore how perspective shapes civic life and to study ways that youth voices can be more effectively incorporated into public decision-making. Her research interests include youth governance, civic education, leadership equity, and policy development.
The long-term goal is a Youth Co-Author Framework — a research-based model for how institutions can include young people in shaping policy from the beginning, rather than consulting them after decisions are already drafted.
PARALLAX is in its founding research phase. The framework is currently in development.