With Youth, For Youth – Positive Youth Development and Youth Actively Create Opportunities Activity
With youth, for youth! Imagine attending an event where youth are engaged in every aspect, from designing the event, to moderating discussions, translation/interpretation, preparing and serving culinary delights and playing music for the guests…
…Imagine research entirely conducted by youth, who developed the survey, distributed it across the country, gathered and analyzed data, and compiled it into a publication…
…Imagine a community action initiated by youth willing to make positive changes in their surroundings and implemented by them with the engagement of their peers…
These examples and more are all daily practices for USAID’s Youth Actively Create Opportunities Activity in North Macedonia. From the beginning, the Activity started operating under the motto “With Youth, For Youth,” and fully integrating Positive Youth Development (PYD) elements into the planning and implementation of initiatives.
Moreover, the focus from the beginning was to “practice what the Activity preaches” - engage young people not only as beneficiaries but also as cocreators of the Activity, giving youth opportunities to contribute to the implementation of the Activity with their creativity and first-hand understanding of youth’s preferences. For instance, from the moment you enter the USAID’s Youth Actively Create Opportunities Activity office, you can feel the youth-friendly atmosphere through the colorfully painted walls with illustrations created entirely by students.
However, to reflect on where the Activity stands and where it aims to go related to PYD, the team conducted a Collaboration, Learning, and Adaptation (CLA) reflection, detailed in this document. The review aims to share how the team integrated PYD elements into the planning and implementation of activities, and the results of PYD integration.
A participatory and consultative approach was adopted, engaging project staff, partners, development experts, and grant staff. A participative approach was applied to gather insights into PYD incorporation since the start of the Activity’s implementation to better understand how the Activity will adapt to provide improved access to youth for all aspects of the implementation in the future.
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