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YOUTH
PARTICIPATION
Rationale The African Youth Alliance, as a program that seeks to improve the sexual and reproductive health of adolescents, believes that young people have the right to participate meaningfully in their own development. Moreover, AYA considers young people to be critical partners in solving the sexual and reproductive health challenges they face. Indeed, the premise that young people contribute positively to programmatic impact when they are actively involved in program planning is crucial to youth development and sexual health programming. Working in partnership with young people is often a challenge for traditional adult program managers. Not only do program managers often believe they are more experienced and thereby more suited to decision making than young people, but they must also contend with a situation — working with young people as equal partners— that runs counter to typical adult-child dynamics in most settings. Even with these significant challenges, AYA believes that youth participation can significantly increase project effectiveness and sustainability, positively benefit those youth directly involved in program development, and increase the impact on young people in the project areas. As participants in the project, young people can contribute in many ways, including —
Youth participation is the active and meaningful involvement of young people in all stages of program decision-making, including planning ,implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Young people are assets whose contributions can make a difference to program success. These contributions, made as part of an equal partnership between adults and young people are the essence of youth participation. Youth are neither subjects nor recipients, but rather partners with adults in a mutually respectful relationship that recognizes the abilities, strengths and experience each partner contributes to achieve program success. Indeed, reproductive health experts believe that young people should be involved in many, if not all, stages of projects intended to improve their lives. Key Program Elements There are few documented model strategies that actively involve youth in program management and as a result, guidance on specific successful participation strategies is limited. However, research suggests that the following important key elements and requirements are important to create successful strategies —
Guidelines for assessing youth participation at all levels of programming — including planning and design, governance and oversight, and implementation, monitoring and evaluation — will be developed to ensure the meaningful involvement of young people. AYA will commit the resources necessary to support the role of young people in the program. In addition, a youth group representative of the age and gender of AYA's target group and consisting of representatives from the four AYA countries will be established to advise AYA management at all levels and ensure that youth are effectively involved in the implementation of AYA activities. Involving young people as program leaders and educators provides an alternative to the adult professional and can sometimes yield better outcomes. Such involvement also enhances the skill;s, self-esteem, and leadership potential of the young people who are trained as peer educators. It is essential that youth receive the skills and exposure needed for them to effectively engage and partner with adults and to become leaders and role models among their peers and communities. In AYA, young people will identify those skills required to enable them to participate effectively such as improved competencies and self-esteem leadership skills and experience; self-discipline and time management; and expanded livelihood opportunities so that adequate mechanisms to build youth capacity are developed and applied. Evaluation Methods for Assessing Program Interventions AYA will consider an operational research design to assess the role of youth participation. Youth involvement is advocated by most major international agencies (WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA and IPPF), however, little evaluation has been designed to link youth participation with improved program outcomes, even though its advantages are intuitively plausible as the ability of the program to reach out to the young people it targets is inextricably linked to the program's ability to involve young people in all aspects of programming. Evaluation of youth participation will be based on a qualitative assessment to determine —
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