4. Call to Action

Audience members cheering during the One Year Out Theater Performance in Kenya in advance of the Women Deliver 2019 Conference.
Credit: Brian Otieno

Young people are key agents of change for the world’s most pressing challenges. The co-authors of this publication are calling on decision makers and resource holders to partner with and invest in youth in the ways described throughout this publication. While this approach for working with adolescents and youth can apply in many contexts, we spe-cifically call on national governments to adopt these recommendations to ensure long-term, sustainable partnerships and financing for youth.

Adopt the equitable youth engagement and co-Leadership approach and transform ways of working with adolescents and youth

by ensuring young people, in all their diversity, are in positions of power and leadership within your initiatives, organizations, programs, and policymaking processes for gender equality and sustainable development. This is grounded on the following three pillars:

An inclusive and enabling environment in which young people are seen as equals, are free to express themselves safely, have access to the information needed to complete the project in a youth-friendly manner, and are safe mentally, emotionally, and physically.
Adequate and fair compensation for youth who are co-creating, co-designing, co-leading, and co-owning advocacy work.
Technical and capacity support for adults and young people to ensure everyone has the necessary skills to accomplish the project's goals and cultivate a meaningful and equitable partnership.

Increase funding for youth-focused programming & direct funding to young people and youth-led organizations especially at the national level:

Prioritize investment in youth development policies and programs when setting national budgets. Youth programming is as important as every other issue – not only does it have a cross-cutting impact across all development areas, but it is also necessary to create a just and equitable society.
Allocate a specific national budget to fund context-specific youth-led initiatives nationwide.

Convert inequitable funding practices with youth to trust-based, multi-year, flexible, and unrestricted funding.

Revise grantmaking policies, guidelines, eligibility criteria, and monitoring and evaluation frameworks for accessibility, fairness, and sustainability.
Ensure youth have access to financial systems and resources, such as the banking system.
Include youth systematically in grantmaking processes to ensure youth priorities are addressed and that grantmaking is participatory.

Evaluate and report transparently and clearly on actions taken to co-create, co-design, and co-lead with young people, and continuously reflect on learnings from the co-Leadership process.

Communicate learnings and takeaways with young people through traditional and social media.
Continuously scale up efforts to increase the quality, depth, and timeliness of equitable youth engagement practices.

Improve the quality and transparency
of data on funding to youth.

For youth-focused programs, data should include the total funding allocated, how the funds were spent, and gender, age, and ability disaggregated data of those the program reached.
For funding to young people, data should include total funding allocated directly to young people, how funding decisions were made, the terms of the funding agreements, and gender, age, and ability disaggregated data of those who received the funding.