Youth Participation Guide

Youth Participation Guidelines for Donors and Policy Makers

Often youth participation is perceived to be the domain of civil society organisations alone. It is crucial that all development sectors engage fully with young people, donors and policy makers in particular.  This Youth Participation Guide will help institutional donor agencies and government policy makers to work more effectively with and for young people.  

The guide was developed in 2009/10 by the DFID-CSO Youth Working Group, with Restless Development as the lead agency, and in full partnership with the UK Department for International Development (DFID). The guide:

• Highlights the evidence base for youth participation through 20 case studies from across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
• Focuses on current priority areas of Governance, Voice and Accountability; Post-Conflict Transitions and Livelihoods; and Sexual & Reproductive Health Rights.
• Provides strategies and standards for donors and policy makers to use youth participation to improve results in areas such as organisational development, policy and planning, implementation of interventions and monitoring & evaluation.

This groundbreaking document on youth participation arose from a remarkable process that was itself a demonstration of the skill and capacity of young people to contribute to development at the highest levels. Young people and young professionals occupied all project roles within the core project team of guide researchers and workshop coordinators, as well as being represented among the project committee members and publication review group.

This was a highly collaborative 18-month project between donor agencies - including DFID, the World Bank, GTZ, USAID, the Asian Development Bank, UNICEF and UNFPA - and youth-focused civil society organisations in the UK, Uganda and Nepal.

You can obtain a pdf of the guide, or access an interactive version at www.ygproject.org.

“Today’s generation of young people is the largest in history. Over 3 billion people – nearly half of the world’s population – are under the age of 25…Young people are a valuable asset to their countries and investing in them brings tremendous social and economic benefits…It is crucial that all development partners engage the young decision makers of tomorrow in the development decisions of today”.

Nemat (Minouche) Shafik, Permanent Secretary, DFID, from the Forward of the Youth Participation Guidelines publication

For more information, contact nicola@restlessdevelopment.org