The Youth Pandemic Project is a record of young people sharing their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, we have a collection of ~100 video-recorded conversations, mostly captured remotely, and nearly all recorded during the pandemic.

The participants range from 4 to 20 years old. The majority lives in the United States, but participants also live in Asia, Africa, Europe, Oceania, and South-America.

Topics of conversation include: online learning, isolation, loss, mental health, and the unexpected blessings and growth that came from the pandemic.

Hi 👋🏼 My name is Julie Meerschwam. I am a video producer based in NYC and a Mom of two children.

I’ve always had a lot of respect for young people and their unique and valuable perspectives. I grew up in The Netherlands, where children are very much considered integral to society and are regarded as equally important participants as adults. It’s that mindset that led me to create The Youth Pandemic Project.

As the pandemic unfolded, I noticed that nearly all writing about the pandemic in the public domain was done by adults. Some media covered topics about youth, such as youth mental health, parenting, and education, however almost all of those voices belonged to adults as well.

I worried that we would live through a major global event—one that affected children as much as adults—and only after it had passed would realize that we had forgotten to include children in the real-time documentation of this period.

And so I set out to document children’s voices and stories, first by interviewing children in my close social circles, and eventually beyond.

As I started talking to children and their families, it soon became clear that I needed a right-hand person to focus on the participants’ mental wellbeing. And so I asked my good friend and aspiring youth mental health professional, Sarah Tester, to come on board to help create protocols and best practices to make sure the conversations were a healthy, healing experience for each participant.

The goal of The Youth Pandemic Project is to have a first-person record by children about their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic. This way we can one day look back and have a better understanding of what this period was like for young people.

Equally importantly, the goal of this project is to encourage inclusion of young people’s voices in the public conversation about topics that are relevant to all of us.

Initially, I reached out to my close social circles. After a while, I started posting notices on my social media and on casting websites.

The process for each interview was quite extensive. The first step was to send an informational document to each interested participant and their parent/guardian so we would make sure they understood the project, its goals, and its potential risks. Next, we set up a meeting with the child and parent to talk through all the information, make sure they understood everything, make sure they felt that this was a helpful opportunity for them, where we addressed concerns, and where we checked that the child had a support system for after the interview, in case it brought up strong emotions.

Next, we set up the interview. We made sure the participants understood that they could change their minds about participating at any point and that they never had to answer any questions they were not comfortable with. After the interview, we would send them their recorded files so they had a chance to review our conversation and re-consent (or withdraw) from the project.

Our current goal are to fill out this website with edits from all 100+ recorded interviews.

We are also conducting follow-up interviews with some participants in order to create a longer term reflection of how the pandemic has affected their lives.

We are also welcoming new participants, but are still figuring out ways to include them that doesn’t overwhelm our very, very small team.

You can absolutely reach out to express interest and we will explore what sorts of participation we can accommodate given our limited resources. Please contact us here, introduce yourself, say a few words about the most impactful parts of your pandemic experience, and make sure your parent/guardian is on board with your initial outreach.

We would love for this project to be part of publications or museums, so that youth voices can be amplified. Please contact us for further questions.