Youth Led Development and the MDGs: A Framework for Development
              (by Rashid Zuberu)

When development first became a priority back in the 1960's, young people were an early focus of government efforts. Alec and Moira Dickson set up Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) in the UK, and President Kennedy set up the US Peace Corps. Both were youth service organizations. As errors in development policy multiplied (through no fault of the youth), there was a move to 'professionalize' development. Out went the young, eager volunteers; in came the highly trained PhD professionals. Organizations like VSO, UN volunteers and Peace Corps sought to recruit more qualified older professionals, and others like Medicins Sans Frontieres, with their teams of highly qualified professionals, became the NGOs of choice.

The contribution that non-expert youth could make fell right back in development calculus to the point where some like the UK minister, Clare Short cut them out of her planning. None of her Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) included any mention of a role for youth. Equally, this year's two UN reports on the implementation of the MDGs make no mention of youth or their potential; as anyone who has bothered to look will know. Youth-Led Development (YLD) is already an enormous field worth several billion dollars to the global economy. In many parts of the developing world, every village has a youth self-help association which deals with starting up small businesses, coping with crisis brought on by HIV/AIDs, war, trafficking, human rights abuses, gender violence, diseases, poverty, hunger, etc. Young people are directly responsible for their survival number in the millions. In the industrialized north, youth-led initiatives are increasingly widespread.

The activist web portal TakingITGlobal has close to 100,000 members. Another Canadian organization, Free the Children, has built over 400 schools and distributed 250,000 school packs in the poorest parts of the developing world. Young people in the UK raised 27 million pounds last year for charities. Youth Service America calculates that teenagers in the USA contribute $34 billion dollars worth of voluntary service hours each year. In September 2000, the United Nations held a groundbreaking event. Together in New York, the presidents, prime ministers and royalty of the world's 191 countries, pledged to achieve significant progress in eight major areas by the year 2015. These 'Millennium Development Goals' tackle many of the world's most pressing challenges and provide an ambitious framework through which many countries are now approaching development.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are to:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development

It has been five years since the world made the millennium promises, and every single country that committed to decreasing extreme poverty by half have only ten years remaining. These were real promises, which poor countries took extremely seriously; however, with five years already passed they look increasingly unattainable. If current trends continue, without the active involvement of youth, it will be until 2147 before real progress will be made.

As an American historian rightly noted, in our world of big names, our true heroes are the unsung ones and tend to be curiously anonymous. This description aptly fits the many countless initiatives of young people all over the world who took the challenge after the millennium summit to improve the lot of others based on the eight goals. Their efforts may not merit the headlines, but they have been very instrumental in the campaign to achieve the MDGs.

The importance of increased youth participation in the political process has been widely recognized by governments and international organizations yet often overlooked when policies are drafted. It is acknowledged that the principles of citizenship, democratic inclusion and representation can only be realized with the full participation of youth in the political process and social action.

Youth are an integral part of society and are strongly affected by development issues. By 2015, the proportion of young people in Sub-Sahara Africa will increase by approximately 28%, while in South Asia the proportion will increase by 15%. The role of young people in the global endeavour to achieve the Millennium Development Goals must therefore be recognized by demographic necessity. Youth are capable of meeting this challenge and must work together with all actors in the global community to bring about holistic development in society.

Youth are at the forefront of change within their societies and are therefore in a position to identify and respond to the needs that arise from these developments. The abilities of young people to think creatively and network with others from diverse backgrounds, combined with their grassroots knowledge and dynamism, means that young people can harness cultural changes for a positive outcome. Indeed these abilities have been demonstrated by the work of youth throughout the world.

Ever innovative and resourceful, massive numbers of youth are mobilising for a change in our global society; for example, there are more than 3000 YLD projects in Kenya alone. During the recently held World Youth Congress in Scotland, one of the aims was to highlight the wide range of experience this generation of youth already have in development projects. Moreover, as well as having a significant and positive effect on development, YLD has beneficial outcomes for youth themselves and the societies around them. Youth-Led Development is growing, breaking the stereotypes of apathy, irresponsibility and belligerence that are so often associated with youth. It is instrumental that one creates a positive perception of youth as a resource rather then a burden.

The empowerment of youth to make positive changes through YLD translates into greater participation in all areas of civil and political society. Without such youth inclusion, an entire generation will remain disenfranchised, disillusioned and isolated. This marginalization would be a willful neglect of the resources, achievements and potential of young people.

Quite recently, a minister of state in Ghana remarked, 'the youth of Ghana were asleep', meaning that they are not active and are failing to engage themselves in development initiatives. This is contrary to the widely held view across the West African sub-region that Ghanaian youth are playing a crucial role in the development of Ghana and the sub-region. The minister may not be wrong in his assertion because the immediate past and present governments have failed consistently to recognize the achievement of young people like Emmanuel Edudzie, Franklin Cudjoe, Kwame Anane Frempong, Clement Gyimah, Aku Xornam, Mahmoud Jaja, Sammy Jacobs Abbey, Shamimah Muslim, and myself, among others, who are playing pioneering roles in youth-led development throughout Ghana in the face of insurmountable obstacles.

The National Youth Council of Ghana has failed to fulfill the purposes for which it was formed; it has become a symbolic institution, but lacks the necessary governmental support to mobilize Ghanaian youth for national development. The council is being run by people who fall outside the internationally defined age for youth and have lost their energy, enthusiasm, passion, and creativity. Apart from it being run by over-aged adults, the National Youth Council has also become a political institution where favoured men and women in the ruling government get the top posts. So the fact that you are too old for such a position doesn't matter at all if only you speak the language of the government in power.

One significant failure of the council has been its inability to lobby successive governments to pass the national youth policy. Although we have spent millions of taxpayers, and it has been reviews for the past seven years, "God" knows when it shall come to the Ghanaian parliament for debate before its passage into law. I wouldn't delve too much into the enormous benefits it shall bring to the ordinary Ghanaian youth on the street. In a country where everything has turned political, we the youth would not be drawn into it and would not waste our energy in making noise about the minister's remarks but would channel our energy and resources into helping our communities who appreciate our effort against all the odds.

While youth frequently have the passion, vision, potential, energy and commitment for development projects, access to resources is often limited and must be broadened. We recognize our responsibility in promoting the aims and tangible goals of the policy document of the World Youth Congress 2005 (WYC) in achieving the MDGs, as well as the "Action Tool Kit" distributed through global youth networks to further the interaction, mobilisation, and active engagement of global youth.

As youth we recognize the efforts that have already been made to increase youth participation at all levels of decision making, but need our partners in political and civil society to commit to the following;

1. Participation
When youth have been involved in development initiatives, it has almost always been as beneficiaries rather than as active and equal partners. Therefore, we request that:

• Governments, NGOs, development agencies, civil society groups and other stakeholders involve youth in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of development programmes.
• Devolved structures such as district development councils and HIV/AIDS committees incorporate youth representation and also make deliberate efforts to involve youth in the design and management of all their programmes.
• Inter-governmental agencies, central government and local government agencies create specific structures and processes to facilitate true and meaningful partnerships with youth. This could include the creation of youth desks in the various ministries of national government and the different organs of regional and international institutions.
• Youth be involved in the consultation processes of individual country development strategies (such as Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, Country Strategy Papers), and that the outcome papers acknowledge the role of YLD in national development strategies.
• National legislation governing the registration of NGOs be sufficiently flexible to enable young people to register their organisations and so be eligible for funding of YLD projects and other benefits.

2. Research
We welcome the initiative of the World Bank to devote their 2007 World Development Report to 'Development for (and by) the Next Generation.' However, we note that, to date, young people have not been sufficiently involved in research into youth-related development issues. This has made it very hard to establish the evidence base that most institutions require in order to effectively engage youth as development partners. It has also served to cement negative stereotypes of youth. For example, banks are usually wary of giving soft loans to young people despite the fact that anecdotal evidence shows that young people have a high success rate with their projects and the repayment of loans. Young people therefore call for more research to enable institutions wishing to engage them to make informed choices. In particular, we demand that:

• Development research be desegregated to show youth specific data. For instance, poverty-related research findings should be broken down to show youth the specific poverty indices. This also applies to other areas including conflict, health, political participation and agriculture.
• A regular UN report, in the same vein as the UNDP Human Development Report, be commissioned in order to make credible information on YLD available to policy makers and other development actors. This report should track the progress made in involving youth in development at the national and international level.

3. Resources
Youth-led development calls for co-ordinated investment of financial and non-financial resources. In particular, we ask that:

• 0.7% of all Overseas Development Assistance [ODA] be allocated to youth-led development initiatives, as called for in the Casablanca Declaration. In addition, we request that 0.7% of international NGO development funding also be invested in YLD.
• More emphasis should be placed on the training of young people in skills related to organizational management, human resource development, and the media.
• National Youth Development funds be allocated to help create jobs and youth-led business start-ups, with participation from governments and the private sector through incentives such as tax rebates for participating companies.
• National donor consultative platforms be established to allow for a co-ordinated and efficient approach to funding youth-led development initiatives.
• National governments support young entrepreneurship by fostering a culturally, educationally and politically supportive environment together with the financial capital to start up such enterprises.

4. Education
Education must be appropriate both to a local and a global context, to raise awareness the MDGs and to equip students with the skills to implement their own YLD initiatives. In this context, we call for:

• Education that includes the principles of citizenship, human rights and sustainability. These issues provide the foundation for development and a framework in which to design projects. Particular attention should be paid to the principle of human dignity.
• The promotion of successful youth peer-to-peer education models and the provision of funding for their replication.
• National governments, NGOs and international agencies to include skills training in development issues in all primary, secondary and tertiary education institutions with a special focus on the primary level, given the second MDG.

These policies will enable youth-led development projects to grow. By empowering youth, the inspiration and energy behind youth-led development will flourish into real action for a better world. Working on the local level, youth can have an immediate and significant impact on their communities. You can help us. We have shown you how.

Sources

"Be the Change! Third World Youth Congress, Scotland 2005 Policy Document." Scotland 2005. 1 Dec. 2005 <http://www.scotland2005.com>.

[ issue contents ] [ fmm home ] [ send feedback ] [ tell a friend ]