By Christy Olenik, Former YP2LE Project Director

Prior to 2012, engaging youth in international development was less of a priority. Most programming targeted children or adults, and the issues and challenges young people faced were not well understood. There was a core group of people at USAID who recognized the missed opportunity and, through a lot of time and effort, they were able to design the Youth in Development Policy and the YouthPower mechanism. YouthPower was a catalyst for helping development practitioners see youth as an important group, harnessing their energy and passion for advancing their own communities and helping others recognize youth as the future leaders of governments, institutions, and the private sector.

Under the YouthPower mechanism, USAID established YouthPower Learning to build a foundation of evidence for Positive Youth Development (PYD) and to help put the engagement of young people on the development radar. YouthPower Learning worked in collaboration with many stakeholders to develop the USAID PYD Framework, a foundational element for PYD that is still used today to help design youth interventions in low- and middle-income countries around the world. We also identified PYD knowledge gaps and created publications, toolkits, training courses, and other PYD resources for USAID staff, youth-serving organizations, and young people themselves. In addition, while all of that was taking place, we were able to build a community around the YouthPower.org and YouthLead.org platforms through communities of practice (CoPs), youth advisory groups, and of course, our YouthLead Ambassadors.  

We learned a good deal from YouthPower Learning and we incorporated those lessons into our design of YouthPower2: Learning and Evaluation (YP2LE). We wanted to capitalize on the momentum from YouthPower Learning to take a deeper dive into youth inclusion and participation across development sectors. We continue to develop new tools, resources, and research on PYD, and we have updated tools created under YouthPower Learning with new and better information. To improve the CoPs, we spent time at the beginning of YP2LE to figure out what worked and what did not under YouthPower Learning. We then adjusted their topic areas of focus and ways in which they exchanged information. Our CoPs hold webinars and networking events that give implementers, researchers, and other stakeholders a space to share, learn, access, and create resources to improve their work.  

Where YP2LE really shines is in youth engagement. Our Youth Advisory Group advises the YP2LE team on strengthening youth engagement across our activities and initiatives. The YouthLead Ambassadors raise visibility and awareness about PYD and the YouthLead platform. When it makes sense, our research activities include youth researchers and our events include youth as presenters. Both YouthPower Learning and YP2LE have produced numerous guides to help USAID and others engage youth in a meaningful way. One example is the pilot curriculum for USAID on meaningful youth engagement that we co-developed with YouthExcel.

Thanks to the contribution of many people in USAID, our CoPs, youth-serving organizations, and the young people who engaged as YouthLead Ambassadors, researchers, and more, over the last 10 years, we have significantly moved the needle on the use of PYD in development.