Open the Door — Young People Are Waiting
As a co-founder of a global youth-led organization, my day-to-day agenda looks just a little different than what most people my age might be used to. For example, most of my days start with early-morning Skype or WhatsApp calls with other young people from all over the world. And before we dive into advocacy updates, organizing, and all the great things that come with our work, I get to hear about their lives — the new girlfriend or boyfriend, trying to get jobs or pay the bills, the difficulties of being young and attempting to chart a life course. Sometimes, these informal updates turn to family planning — a territory we are very comfortable with, and nightmarish stories emerge. One friend told me about how she was asked to bring in her partner to approve her decision to get her IUD taken out. Another was shamed for even asking her doctor about contraception. Another colleague was told by her doctor that she didn’t need STI testing because her mother had told the doctor she was abstinent. Imagine hearing these stories, all before morning tea. This is why I do what I do.
If trained youth advocates, who intimately know the policies that are meant to protect them, face issues getting the family planning services they need, can you imagine what other youth are facing? As a young person, I am glad that the tenor of our global conversations around family planning are shifting towards accountability, political will, and return on investment with 2020 on the horizon. It is certainly time to pull back the curtain to see what we’ve been able to achieve.
And we know our work is cut out for us. As we reflect on our progress, we should be asking ourselves: Can we really have effective policies and programs if we don’t have young people shaping them for the future? I would argue that the same (old) inputs will yield the same outputs. We need to let youth activists take the helm to keep family planning on the agenda and hold their governments to account to deliver on commitments, but also to keep pushing the envelope for more progressive gains. Through my work with the International Youth Alliance for Family Planning, I know that once connected to resources, a sustained network, and people who believe in them, youth leaders can mobilize mountains! Leveraging my experience working as a youth advocate since 2013, I present some key considerations for donors, partners, and other important stakeholders to inform their post-2020 strategic planning.
1. Build the evidence base to measure the impact of meaningful youth engagement (MYE). Now that there’s a consensus that engaging youth improves family planning and program design, we need to build the body of evidence to identify what constitutes “best practices” and document them. Going forward, donors should agree on MYE criteria and use them to assess grantees’ commitment to MYE , monitor progress in MYE programming, and create a learning platform to share findings among youth program implementers.
The Global Consensus Statement on Meaningful Adolescent and Youth Engagement provides a common definition of meaningful youth engagement (MYE). The approach emphasizes mutually respecting contributions, sharing power in decision making, and integrating the ideas, perspectives, skills, and strengths of young people into policies and programs.
2. Share the wealth. While FP2020 mobilized substantial new investments, few of these funds have gone directly to youth-led organizations. Donors traditionally fund larger organizations to implement youth family planning programs. I think it’s well past the time to “walk the walk” and expand access to direct funding for youth organizations. Such funding would allow youth organizations to channel their innovation, energy, and knowledge into policy advocacy, programming, and accountability efforts without going through established “adult” gatekeepers. Such a move would also recognize youth entities as full members of the family planning community.
3. Change the way you think about capacity building for youth. I think we need to talk about transforming youth advocates, not building their capacity. This type of transformation recognizes that capacity is already there, while also recognizing that youth are going to need different tools and skills at different junctures of advocacy. One-off capacity building is only so helpful with “adult” family planning professionals — we can’t realistically expect that the same approach will serve youth advocates well. Given the right transformative investment and tools, our advocates’ impact will last beyond their tenure as youth, building the very future of our own field. I also believe these advocates’ skills will spill over into other spaces beyond family planning which are central to strengthening the overall health systems in which we operate. One of IYAFP’s youth advocates from Kenya, Lynette Ouma, has benefited from multiple advocacy trainings under the Empowering Evidence-Driven Advocacy project in partnership with PRB. Lynette has leveraged the technical skills gained with her advocacy network of peers to formalize young people’s engagement in youth-friendly contraceptive policy implementation in Narok county. But she hasn’t stopped there. Her transformation as an advocate has driven her to push further, for universal health coverage in Kenya. Since youth are experts in their own communities, their ideas about policy priorities and stakeholder engagement are valuable assets — and will provide great returns on our investments in advocate transformation.
4. Foster the youth movement. Young people are eager to channel our power and energy to demand social and political change. We’ve seen the power of youth leadership at work in many other sectors where youth have used their voice to shape the national conversation and subsequent direction of policies — from pro-democracy movements in West Africa to human rights protests in India, from revolutions to reverse discriminatory school fees in South Africa, to gun control advocacy in the United States. Youth have the potential to hold governments accountable to honor their family planning commitments and sustain progress. Let’s learn from the many instances where embracing youth as part of the social change equation has taken a lot longer than it should have and harness the power of youth with a real seat at the table.
Youth haven’t been in the system the family planning community has been entrenched in for decades — thus, we are not constrained by it. Our ambitious post-2020 goals necessitate we leverage youth energy, ideals, and perspectives. The stories I hear every morning need to change. Our family planning story is in the midst of changing, too. This is a new chapter, and youth are ready and happy to help write it.
