Three Innovative Approaches for Building Support for Young Changemakers
USAID’s New Global LEAD Toolkit provides resources for a new generation of youth to lead positive social change across their communities
Surbhi Kumari, like many of the other 2.4 billion youth on the planet right now, is passionate about wanting to contribute creative ideas and radical solutions to some of the world’s biggest development challenges.
While she and millions of other young people are motivated to take collective action in their communities, they often find their voices discounted by those in power.
Through USAID’s new Global Leadership and Education Advancing Development (LEAD) initiative, Surbhi has been able to connect with peers and allies to help advocate and act for positive change.
With a mission to support a new generation of young leaders, Global LEAD seeks to activate one million young changemakers like Surbhi across the globe. To this end, USAID has supported a brand-new Global LEAD Toolkit, a resource guide for youth-focused and youth-inclusive programming that provides practical guidance for donors and partners to scale up civic education, civic engagement, and youth leadership across sectors.
Keep reading to learn more about three of USAID’s activities that highlight Global LEAD’s 26 intervention models — including how they helped Surbhi and others like her more easily develop new activities or enhance existing ones.
1. Game of Choice, Not Chance Project: Youth Designers
For many adolescent girls in low- and middle- income countries, dreams of education and a career are disrupted by early marriage and teenage pregnancy. Game of Choice, Not Chance (GOC), a USAID-funded pilot program in India, seeks to disrupt that. The choice-based, story driven mobile game includes in-game reproductive health information and links to relevant resources. GOC incorporates a “Youth Designers” model into its programming by actively involving young people in the research, planning, and design of the game.
The girls experience the power of their choices, connect to vital information and real-world resources, and become better equipped to shape their futures with confidence.
Surbhi, a local youth coordinator who had previously led a community engagement campaign that promoted dialogue regarding early and forced marriage in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, was pivotal in ensuring the success of Game of Choice, Not Chance. As a community leader, she capitalized on her skills to conduct co-design sessions with fellow participants and shape the game’s prototype. Armed with the skills she learned as a community organizer and GOC coordinator, Surbhi now works for a local NGO promoting female STEM leadership.
“I reached out to other girls in the community and helped grow the game by connecting them with technology. I learned how to conduct research and maintain accountability during my work and do our work in a better way by ensuring a good relationship with girls.” — Surbhi Kumari, Co-Design Coordinator
2. Youth Ethnic Integration: Local Learning Exchange
Youth Ethnic Integration (YEI) has given students like Hana Bushi, a senior at a secondary school in North Macedonia, the opportunity to initiate positive change in her community, which has been affected by ethnic tensions. A USAID initiative, YEI enables positive interactions and youth-led activities among ethnically diverse youth at schools and within communities.
A student coordinator at the Idea Fusion Center — an informal youth group supported by YEI — Hana encourages young people to take an active role in improving interethnic relations and strengthening civic action within their communities. As part of this mission, Hana led a team that beautified the interior and exteriors of Cvetan Dimov Secondary Vocational School, bringing together students from diverse ethnicities and languages, and resulting in a better understanding of each other’s differences and shared humanity.
“The Idea Fusion Center was the best experience I had because I met with a lot of people that are Turkish, Macedonian, and Albanian. We are all humans, but everyone is different, so everyone was sharing different ideas…and I realized that this is really good. I can see a different perspective of life.” — Hana Bushi, Student Coordinator
3. YouthMappers: Digital Mapping
A network of nearly 300 university-led chapters in more than 60 countries, YouthMappers cultivates a generation of thousands of young leaders who help improve their world by mapping it. The YouthMappers program is an initiative of the USAID GeoCenter and provides university students with digital mapping skills, leadership experiences, and opportunities to create new geospatial data for humanitarian and development projects in undermapped places of the world.
YouthMapper Rubaina Chalpang Adam in Ghana was “awestruck” when first introduced to the work of LetGirlsMap while studying Geomatic Engineering at the University of Mines and Technology in Ghana. She discovered an exciting new world through the use of OpenStreetMap, a free and open web-based platform created and edited by volunteers like herself to help solve development problems. She particularly connected with the work of LetGirlsMap, hosting several mapathon events and making it her mission to engage more young women in community mapping including how to map COVID-related resources.
“In YouthMappers we say we don’t just build maps, we build mappers — and we need more girls for a change!” — Rubaina Chalpang Adam
One Million Young Changemakers
Today’s young people contribute creative ideas, radical solutions, and new energy to some of the world’s biggest development challenges. Global LEAD seeks to leverage the passion of Surbhi, Rubaina, and Hana and millions more youth through a new compact with youth and expansion of education, civic/political engagement, and leadership development approaches across all sectors of development programming.
Young people are not just leaders of the future, they are taking action today as partners in development.
Visit Global LEAD’s Toolkit to learn about relevant and innovative ways to engage youth as partners in development.
About the Author
Manuela Nivia is a Virtual Student Federal Service intern with USAID working on the Global LEAD Initiative. She is a Master in Public Policy in Global Affairs candidate at Yale University.
