Youth Working Group

The DFID-CSO Youth Working Group brings together UK based organisations working on youth and development issues globally. Restless Development has been involved since the group was established in 2008, and has served as the convener of the group since 2009.

The DFID-CSO Youth Working group is made up of over 30 organisations, from small youth-led organisations to large international NGOs. We are committed to young people and are experts in a diverse range of sectors: governance, livelihoods, working in fragile states, etc. The Youth Working Group aims to work with DFID as a partner by providing technical expertise, facilitating reach and access to young people and sharing evidence and research findings.

A Steering Committee coordinates the overall work of the YWG and coordinates communications with DFID. Four young people sit on the committee, along with individuals from Restless Development, Warchild, British Youth Council, Commonwealth Youth Exchange Council, VSO, Peace Child and Plan International.

Key Achievements/ Activities

The Youth Working Group and DFID policy teams have been working together on common issues over the past two years.  Examples of our collaboration have included:

  • Youth Participation Guidance for Donors and Policy Makers: a new resource for institutional donor advisors and policy makers at country level to work more creatively and effectively with and for youth. This was launched at DFID in March 2010, with the Minister of State for DFID giving the introductory speech. Find out more.
  • Youth Focus Groups on social exclusion to enable DFID to survey youth directly (March 2009)
  • Input into Scoping Studies and Policy Papers such as the ‘Youth Exclusion, Violence, Conflict and Fragile States’ and ‘Youth, Jobs and Inclusive Growth’ scoping studies of literature and evidence (March 2009)
  • DfID/CSO Youth Consultation for White Paper, including co-ordination and facilitation of the Youth Consultation with senior civil servants and Ministers, recruiting youth participants and providing trained youth facilitators (March 2009)
  • Research Submission, undertaking a needs analysis for the children and youth sector jointly with the Children’s Working Group, and making a combined submission to DFID’s White Paper on future research priorities (November 2007)
  • Youth Mapping Study assessing DFID's existing approach and their work with and for young people, setting out recommendations for future focus (October 2007)

For more information on the Youth Working Group please contact victoria@restlessdevelopment.org.