YLM-RDF
Project at a Glance
Project name
Youth-Led Monitoring for a Resilient Digital France (YLM-RDF)
Implementing organisation
Human Development Research Initiative (HDRI)
Duration
7 months (April – mid-November 2026)
Thematic focus
Digital rights, civic participation, and youth-led policy monitoring
Geographic scope
France, with a focus on rural and marginalised communitie
Target group
Young citizens aged 16–24, with a particular focus on rural and marginalised yout
Reach (planned)
100+ direct participants; 10,000+ citizens reached through outreach
Overview
Youth-Led Monitoring for a Resilient Digital France (YLM-RDF) is a seven-month HDRI project that puts young people at the centre of France's digital transformation. France has committed significant public investment to closing its digital divide, yet civil society, and young citizens in particular, have had little voice in shaping how that transformation unfolds. YLM-RDF changes that equation: it trains and mobilises young researchers to independently monitor France's digital policy rollout, gathers the lived experience of youth in rural and underserved communities, and turns both into a formal set of recommendations delivered directly to national decision-makers.
The project unfolds in three stages, evidence-gathering, dialogue, and advocacy, culminating in the 2026 Youth Declaration on Digital Resilience, a youth-authored policy document presented to France's national digital governance bodies.
Background
Digital transformation is reshaping how citizens access public services, education, and economic opportunity, but not everyone is being brought along at the same pace. Independent assessments have identified a "consultation gap" in how France's national digital strategy was developed, with limited input from civil society organisations during the drafting process. At the same time, a meaningful share of the population, and a concerning share of young people specifically, still lack basic digital skills, falling short of the level the EU has set as its 2030 target for all Member States.
The gap is not evenly distributed. Young people in rural areas and in communities facing broader social and economic disadvantage are significantly more likely to be excluded from the benefits of digital public services, a pattern sometimes referred to as "illectronisme", a form of digital exclusion that is educational and social in nature, not simply a matter of access to devices or connectivity. Community-based support structures that help bridge this gap are themselves under strain, adding urgency to independent, evidence-based monitoring of how well France's digital transition is serving its youngest and most vulnerable citizens.
YLM-RDF was designed to respond directly to this gap: not by producing another top-down assessment, but by putting young people, including those the strategy is meant to serve, in the position of monitoring it, evaluating it, and advocating for what needs to change.
Objectives & Target Groups
Objectives
-
Independently assess how France's national digital strategy is being implemented, with a specific focus on youth digital skills and rural-urban disparities.
-
Give young people a genuine platform to evaluate and critique the digital public services that affect their daily lives.
-
Translate research and dialogue into advocacy by producing a formal, youth-authored set of recommendations delivered directly to national digital policy bodies.
-
Raise public awareness among young citizens of their digital rights, particularly around online safety and control over personal data.
Target Groups
YLM-RDF is designed for and, in large part, by young citizens aged 16 to 24, with particular attention to two groups who are too often left out of digital policy conversations: young people living in rural areas experiencing economic decline, and young people facing broader social and economic disadvantage in both rural and urban settings. The project treats these groups not as passive beneficiaries, but as co-researchers, workshop participants, and, in several cases, contributors to the project's final policy recommendations.
How the Project Works
The project is structured in three sequential stages, presented here as a simple journey. Suggested layout: three cards or a horizontal timeline visitors can click through.
Stage 1 — Civic Monitoring
Months 1–4. HDRI's research team conducts an independent, evidence-based audit of how France's national digital strategy is being rolled out, measure by measure, with particular attention to rural areas and communities facing digital exclusion. This stage produces the evidence base the rest of the project builds on: a detailed monitoring report and an open dataset mapping where digital exclusion is most severe and why.
Meet the team
The project is structured in three sequential stages, presented here as a simple journey. Suggested layout: three cards or a horizontal timeline visitors can click through.
Secretariat
President & Legal Representative
Gurgen Petrosyan
Leads HDRI and serves as the project's institutional point of contact.
Operations Officer
Luis Ernesto MartinezL
Executive Board
Secretary General
Sofia Balas
Oversees HDRI's governance and day-to-day organisational operations.
Communications Director
Mariam Avetyan
Executive Board
Publications Director
Renata Freeman
Executive Board
Project Researchers & Facilitators
Researcher for YLM-RDF
Killian Nathan Papelard
Publications
Researcher for YLM-RDF
Alek Umont
Publications
Deliverables Library
Every major output from YLM-RDF will be published here as it's finished, reports, data, and the Youth Declaration itself. Consider this page a growing library: it starts light and fills up as the project moves through its seven months.
Comprehensive Monitoring Report on France's Digital Roadmap, full assessment of national implementation progress, focused on the consultation gap and the digital skills gap
EN
FR
Data Set: Mapping Youth Digital Exclusion in Rural France, open dataset and visualisations of the urban-rural digital divide
EN
FR
Summary Report of Deliberative Youth Workshops, full record of the three regional workshops and the perspectives they surfaced
EN
FR
The 2026 Youth Declaration on Digital Resilience, the project's central, youth-authored policy document
EN
FR
Policy Brief for National Implementation Bodies, targeted recommendations for decision-makers
EN
FR
Digital Rights Campaign Impact Report, results of the public awareness campaign on digital rights
EN
FR
Gallery
Pictures of the workshops say more than a paragraph ever could. This gallery is where YLM-RDF shows its work in progress, the rooms, the whiteboards, the people.
Expected Impact
In the short term, YLM-RDF gives visible, evidence-based form to a problem that has so far gone largely undocumented from a youth perspective: the gap between France's digital ambitions and the lived reality of young people in excluded communities. In the medium term, the project's direct engagement with national policymakers creates a genuine channel for youth priorities to shape the next update of France's digital strategy, including the future of the community-based support structures that help vulnerable citizens navigate digital public services. In the long term, YLM-RDF aims to help close the gap between France's digital skills target and where the country currently stands, while establishing a model of independent, youth-led civic monitoring that can outlast the project itself.
The project is designed around principles of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility throughout: gender-balanced project teams and workshops, active outreach to marginalised and rural youth, accessible formats for all public deliverables, and a drafting process for the Youth Declaration that reflects a genuinely diverse cross-section of the young people it speaks for.
.png)
