Introduction
USAID believes that young people are more than program beneficiaries—they are valuable assets and partners in development. This belief is encapsulated in the agency’s seminal 2012 Youth in Development Policy, which commits to strengthening youth participation and partnership by engaging young people across initiatives and programs.
The Youth in Development Policy has helped usher in a paradigm shift towards appreciating young people as assets and engaging them as partners across various sectors, rather than focusing on single-sector issues. To support USAID’s implementation of this policy, YouthPower conducted extensive analysis in LMIC countries to assess the current landscape for youth engagement, identifying opportunities to strengthen young people’s participation and partnership and barriers to progress. YouthPower has completed youth assessments in 10 countries, and work is underway in an additional three (Mauritania, Guinea, and Kenya). Of the 13 focus countries, 10 are in sub-Saharan Africa, two in Europe/ Eurasia region, and one in Latin America.
The assessments aimed to raise youth voices, and drew heavily on inputs from youth focus group discussions, with approximately 2,000 young people consulted. Most assessments also engaged youth researchers as part of the team.
Overall, these assessments have helped paint a clearer and more robust picture of various dimensions of youth development in these countries, including asking young people to assess their top priorities, their economic prospects, sense of gender discrimination, and factors related to especially marginalized groups such as LGBTQ youth or those with disabilities. The assessments also explored issues related to health and technology use.
Global
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Youth Assessments 101 Brief
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Listening to Youth Through 17 Cross-Sectoral Youth Assessments: Implications for Programming and Policy
Africa
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Democratic Republic of Congo: Rapid Youth Assessment and Activity Design
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Ethiopia: Cross-Sectoral Youth Assessment
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Ghana: Youth Assessment
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Guinea: Cross-Sectoral Youth Assessment
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Kenya: Cross-Sectoral Youth Assessment
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Liberia: Youth Assessment
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Nigeria: Workforce Development and Youth Employment Assessment
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Madagascar: Cross-Sectoral Youth Assessment
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Mauritania: Cross-Sectoral Youth Assessment
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Morocco: Cross-Sectoral Youth Assessment
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Rwanda: Youth Assessment
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Somalia: Cross-Sectoral Youth Assessment
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Zambia: Mission-Wide Youth Assessment
Europe/Eurasia
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Armenia: Cross-Sectoral Youth Assessment
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Kyrgyz Republic: Cross-Sectoral Youth Assessment
Latin America/Caribbean
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Honduras: USAID Development Objective 2 Youth Assessment
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Eastern and Southern Caribbean: Cross-Sectoral Youth Assessment