Empowering Youth Voices: A Guide

"Even with the best intentions, meaningful youth participation in advocacy is still challenging."

This guide offers advice, hints, and tips on how to strengthen youth-adult advocacy partnerships, with an emphasis on involving young people from the start. It is designed as a handy pocketbook for advocacy events or meetings and consists of two parts. One is intended for new youth advocates and offers an introduction to the world of advocacy. The second part is for adults and organisations and offers advice on how best to work with young people in a meaningful way.

The guide was developed by Dance4Life, a project of Rutgers, as part of the Right Here Right Now! Partnership, which seeks to enable young people in all their diversity to enjoy their sexual and reproductive health and rights in societies where there is equity and equality between genders in all aspects of life.

As explained in the guide, meaningfully involving young people in advocacy spaces enables them to be the voices for change, amplifying the rights and aspirations of their peers. Yet, "Advocacy spaces can be quite intimidating. Navigating through labyrinthine advocacy procedures and processes, even with support, can be hard for young people who might not feel comfortable in such an alien environment. Advocacy spaces are complex and often do not allow space for meaningful youth participation. Getting your voice heard requires a certain level of confidence and boldness. Only by investing in the empowerment of young people to develop that voice can we ensure their full and effective participation. Still too often, meaningful youth participation is done in a tokenistic manner. Having young people present without giving them a meaningful role in the preparations and follow-up is, unfortunately, still common practice."

The first part of the resource - "Empowering Youth Voices: A Guide to Becoming a Youth Advocate" - outlines eight steps to help young people develop their skills as they prepare to enter the world of advocacy for the first time. It looks, for example, at how to prepare when making a case to policymakers, the importance of obtaining the right information and data, and knowing how to respectfully argue a point and make useful, concrete recommendations. Guidance advice also includes confidence builders to help young advocates bring their messages across. The eight steps are covered in the following chapters: 
 

1. Talk to Your Youth Constituency
2. Get Yourself a Mentor
3. Decide on Your Priorities and Intended Reach
4. Decide on Your Goals and Recommendations
5. Use the Data
6. Identify Your Allies
7. Get Your Message Across
8. Commit to Being Accountable

The second part of this resource - "A Guide to Supporting New Youth Advocates" - explains how individuals and organisations can make their efforts more substantive and empower young people throughout their participation in advocacy. This information can also be used by more experienced youth advocates when they are supporting newer champions. The guide outlines the following eight steps that are designed to ensure that contributions to the empowerment of youth advocates will be enhanced and enriched: 
 

1. Consider the Benefits of Working with Young People
2. Ensure Inclusivity
3. Be a Mentor
4. Be Open to Mutual Learning
5. Evaluate and Practice
6. Showcase Youth Leadership
7. Focus on Sustainability
8. Monitor and Measure