Community involvement is considered an important element of most health and development programs. Local knowledge can inform program design when community members are involved from the beginning, and community action extends the reach and scope of interventions. Experience with programs in many sectors has shown that behavior change to improve people's health and well-being requires changes in knowledge and attitudes not only at the individual level but also at the community level. Community-level shifts in attitudes and social norms create a more supportive environment that enables individual to adopt and maintain new behaviors. Community involvement can also create the sense of ownership necessary to sustain behavior change beyond the life of an externally funded program. Involving both youth and adults in communities is particularly important for youth reproductive health (YRH) and HIV programs. Some degree of youth involvement is essential for such programs to function. Greater levels of youth participation may also increase the impact of reproductive health and HIV prevention interventions. Programs for youth that are designed only by adults tend to be based on an idealized view of how young people should behave. Young people's participation in planning, implementation and evaluation is expected to ground programs in the real needs of youth and the support systems they actually use, making interventions more relevant to their intended beneficiaries (2005).