What We Do

Our mission is to place young people at the forefront of change and development. We focus all of our work in three strategic areas in which young people are well positioned to contribute their skills and expertise:

• Young people taking up significant roles as partners in the policy-making processes which affect their lives.
• Young people making responsible decisions about their sexual and reproductive health.
• Young people acquiring the skills needed to pursue meaningful livelihood opportunities.

Change has to come from both the top and the bottom. We make our mission and aims a reality by working at every level.   

At the individual and community level, we empower young people to make responsible decisions in their own lives. In the past 25 years, our youth-led programmes addressing health, sexual health, education, livelihoods, governance and youth leadership issues have reached more than 7.5 million young people, providing an immediate, practical benefit to young people and their communities.

Every year, we recruit, professionally train and support more than 1,000 young men and young women (90+% of these nationals working within their own country) who directly deliver programmes in underserved communities reaching more than 420,000 youth in structured weekly activities. Each programme focus is designed to address locally relevant issues, ranging from HIV prevention in Tanzania, to nutrition and livelihoods in Uganda, to increasing enrollment in schools in Nepal, and so much more in countries around the world.

At the organisational level, we utilise our expertise to train and support other development organisations and institutions to more effectively work with and for young people.  As a global youth-led development expert, we expand our reach and impact by working through partners ranging from Colleges of Education in Zambia, to national government ministries in Sierra Leone, to local youth-led organisations in more than 30 countries across Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean.

At the policy level, we engage and advocate with national governments and major international aid institutions to change how they work with young people. We are supporting these major institutions to see young people as an asset, a valuable human resource, ranging from getting youth perspective and voice into National Development Planning in Uganda, to providing technical guidance and tools in youth participation to major donor agencies like DFID, the World Bank and others.

Read more about our youth-led methodology, our work in specific countries, or read our annual reports from 2009 or past years.