OPERATIONS
Successfully scaled-up YSS/YC/ASPs take on one of three approaches—expansion, collaboration, or replication—and planned accordingly starting at the design phase. Many of the same resources developed for sustainability can also be drawn on for scaling, but these must be managed and independently budgeted. When a youth development program aims to scale to new areas, different types of engagement with government, private-sector, and community leaders is required. In addition to strong leadership and trained staff, having mechanisms in place to ensure quality programming is essential to scaling. Strong monitoring and evaluation systems can increase the likelihood of attracting donors and partners to support sustainability and scaling. Successful programs have monitoring systems with well-defined indicators and methods for tracking them, as well as independent evaluations and studies of the program’s theory of change to demonstrate the effectiveness of an approach or model.
Staff, Interns, and Volunteers
Effective and sustainable youth programs employ a combination of well-trained, full-time staff along with youth interns and community volunteers. Key positions include managers, program officers, and financial and administrative staff. These paid staff can be complemented with trained volunteers. Staffing also represents a key opportunity to engage young people, who are often hired as trainers, coaches, or interns. Program staff can include government, school, local NGOs, and other relevant community representatives.
Funders
Partnerships are critical to sustainability. government, private-sector, and local institutions, such as universities, are important sources of sustainable funding and can provide long-term management and operational support. Benefits of these relationships must also be balanced with potential risks. Local conflicts make accepting funding from some sources socially or politically fraught.
Donors of sustainable and scalable youth initiatives can sometimes provide multi-year, unrestricted funding for management and operations. Many best practices (e.g., setting up traditional staffing and management structures, staff training, cultivating partnerships) require investment in staff salaries and overhead that are traditionally not included in donor funding. Also, the most sustainable programs have a long-term funding horizon, which allows them to plan for and implement sustainability strategies. Thus, multi-year funding that can be spent on administrative costs and salaries allows organizations to better implement programming and plan for both sustainability and scaling.
Community Partners (Parents, Governments, NGOs, Local Funders)
Successful youth organizations have safe, accessible spaces for participants and actively engage community members—including parents, families, and community leaders as well as government, private-sector companies, and non-governmental organizations. The space type and location, as well as the level of community engagement, should be flexible depending on the youth population targeted. For example, programs serving girls may seek out an indoor space for privacy and dedicate additional time and resources to talking with parents to address any safety or other concerns and the provision of childcare, whereas programs that serve refugee youth must be prepared to address their specific vulnerabilities, such as trauma or social and economic marginalization.
Youth
Many successful youth programs use a formal curriculum to structure their programming but also remain flexible to the particular needs or interests of their participants. Programs may address workforce development, violence prevention, community engagement, or sexual and reproductive health, depending on the priorities of the organization or youth. Any program will have to account for gender considerations of the young people served, which is best informed by a gender analysis in the planning phase. Fast-changing conditions economically and politically require youth programs to be responsive to participants’ needs in the present in equal measure to those anticipated in the future. The most sustainable youth programs meaningfully involve youth in decision making and plan for sustainability right from the beginning. Starting in the design phase, the donors and implementers of lasting initiatives worked to ensure that the views and needs of youth are reflected in mission and programming and operational and management costs were not prohibitive to long-term community ownership. For example, investment in high-cost facilities that cannot be locally maintained may be detrimental to sustainability.
Find a full list of Operational Resources here.
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