Youth Engagement in PYD Programs:
What strategies are effective in enabling meaningful youth engagement?
- How do we distinguish leadership from participation?
- What are effective strategies to prepare adults to share power with young people?
- How can we understand and build youth leadership across developmental phases?
- How do we develop youth-driven programs which empower youth as change agents?
- Do particular types of youth engagement or leadership reduce program costs or increase program benefits?
Meaningful youth engagement in PYD includes:
- Acceptance of youth at the decision-making table,
- Partnerships for intergenerational dialogue,
- Youth-friendly data, research, and evidence,
- Media and communication tools and support available to youth, and
- Necessary technical and financial support and resources for youth participation.
Authors from Women Deliver assessed the barriers to meaningful youth engagement and suggested core elements necessary for meaningful youth engagement in PYD programs. The assessment findings showed that barriers to engagement included a lack of youth education and information, low levels of trust of youth, lack of respect for youth perspectives, and few opportunities to engage. Based on these findings, they suggested several core elements for meaningful youth engagement in PYD.
- Youth must be involved in program development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and decisions about investment of resources.
- Diverse and marginalized youth must be included, and their voices heard.
- Young peoples’ input should be considered without discrimination, stigma, judgment, or violence.
- Ensure young people understand the political context and technical content; they must have accurate information and the necessary training.
- Youth expertise must be given its due weight and power-shared among stakeholders.
- There must be clear and transparent communication among program stakeholders.
- A youth civil society movement must be supported and funded.
A good example of meaningful youth engagement is the approach of Family Planning 2020 (FP2020). FP2020 mapped over 400 youth-led organizations and supported the global consensus statement for expanding contraceptive choice for adolescents and youth as well as the global consensus statement in meaningful youth engagement (signed by 250 organizations). Currently, they facilitate a youth-led accountability mechanism for FP2020. Further, they created a seat for a young person as part of their high-level reference group and appointed official youth representatives in all FP2020 countries. FP2020 also created a small grant award for youth-led organizations. YouthPower Learning. PYD Learning Agenda Consultation. Meeting Report. November 5, 2019.
Effective Youth Engagement Strategies in Health, Agriculture, and Democracy, Human Rights and Governance
There are examples of effective strategies used to engage youth across sectors
DREAMS is a project implemented in Tanzania, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Zambia to reduce HIV infections in adolescent girls and young women. In collaboration with youth ambassadors, DREAMS project implementers identified several areas important for engaging adolescent girls:
- Understanding the youth context and youth trends.
- Defining what meaningful youth engagement means within an organization and project.
- Assessing opportunities and barriers for youth engagement in program design.
- Using best practices and tools for engaging young people.
In agriculture, what works for youth engagement includes youth skills development, youth financing and youth access to land. Specifically:
- Youth engagement in skills development and skills transfer.
- Bankability of youth enterprises.
- Youth financial literacy.
- Opportunities for youth savings.
- Youth empowered to understand and defend their land rights.
In Democracy, Human Rights and Governance (DRG), civic engagement, electoral participation, governance, and social movements have all positively engaged youth.
Successful civic engagement strategies include:
- Involving youth in decision making at related institutions and in affected communities.
- Prompting youth to organize for collective action and creating opportunities for youth on councils or parliaments to advise government bodies.
For electoral participation, efficacious strategies include:
- Engaging youth as voters.
- Supporting youth candidates.
- Formation of youth wings of political parties.
- Engaging youth as election officials.
- Designing programs that are gender inclusive and work to create gender equity in political participation, an area where young women have traditionally been underrepresented.
- Understanding new models of “participatory citizenship.”
- Engaging youth leaders long-term and embracing the global infrastructure to build local agency and autonomy, but also connecting it to global movements.
