VSO and Youth

VSO and Youth

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Acknowledgements
Many people contributed to the process of researching, developing and writing this policy position. Laura Smith and Kathy Ellwand led the production of the paper and would like to formally thank the huge range of people that contributed their thinking, experience and passion for raising the profile of the role that young people are playing in development and in VSOs work. Thanks are especially due to: Tina Wallace for the knowledge and experience you brought in writing the text to the final version of the paper; VSO colleagues from across the organisation who contributed their thinking, research, case studies, writing and editing skills, advice, knowledge and support to the production of earlier drafts- International Youth Team, Policy Group, programme staff, the members of the youth working group especially Matt Reynolds, Hannah Nunn, Jess Kopp, Charlotte Macken, Treaisa Rowe, Charles Gay, Robby Nazal and Eve Lwembe; Jill Healey for your brilliant paper which was the foundation for this document; Phil Hudson and Amanda Khozi-Mukwashi for championing this project; Sara Cottingham and Joe McMartin; Nii-Doodo Dodoo for helpful feedback on various drafts; Sofia Gonalves for speedy and excellent work on design, layout and publication; the group of young people, VSO programme staff and youth partner organisations from across Africa and Asia, who shared their knowledge and gave invaluable contributions to shape the final paper during the youth workshops in Philippines and South Africa. Text: Tina Wallace Research: Laura Smith, Kathy Ellwand and youth working group Editing: Kathy Ellwand, Laura Smith and Ken Moxham Photography: Cover photo VSO/Ben Langdon

Cover photo: Young people are a priority for VSOs programmes in Africa, helping young people like Hajjarah, 17, who is the head of her family after losing her mother to HIV. VSO 2012 - Unless indicated otherwise, any part of this publication may be reproduced without permission for nonprofit and educational purposes on the condition that VSO is acknowledged. Please send VSO a copy of any materials in which VSO material has been used. For any reproduction with commercial ends, permission must first be obtained from VSO. ISBN: 978-1-903697-15-3

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Contents
Introduction VSOs commitments Why are youth part of these commitments? What does VSO mean by young people? Which young people will VSO work with? What do young people bring and what support can be offered? How does VSO want to work with the young people it targets? Programming for young women and men Where do we want to see change? References 4 5 5 6 7 8 9 12 14 14

VSO/Felicity Thompson

VSO and Youth

Introduction
VSOs vision is a world without poverty, where excluded and marginalised women and men have choices and opportunities to participate effectively in society, have enough to feed and clothe their families, have access to education and healthcare services, have land on which to grow food or a job to earn a living.

Our approach to disadvantage, explained in our strategy People First, involves reaching out to the most marginalised groups in society and putting people at the centre of our work. This approach will be critical to working towards our vision. Building relationships, enabling participation and working with people in every programme as equal partners, are core principles of our approach to development. This requires working closely with staff, partners, volunteers and communities and building their abilities. The purpose of this paper is to present the position of youth within that overall approach. VSO recognises the wide variety of contexts we work in and the different programmes needed to address disadvantage. We also recognise the importance of globalisation, the impacts of the current economic crisis (especially on the poor and disadvantaged), and the opportunities that the growth of communications and technology could provide for many people, especially younger people. VSO wants to work with young people as an integral part of our strategy, to build their leadership, develop mutual ways of working and accountability, and address the multiple issues of disadvantage many experience, especially around gender inequalities. In light of the multiple contexts in which VSO works and the diversity of young people, this paper does not prescribe ways of working. Rather, it highlights the rationale and principles for youth programming in development.

VSO supports the local grassroots development organization, Mankinds Activities for Development Accreditation Movement (MADAM) in its youth livelihood programmes. MADAM provides tailoring and business skills for young women like Nene Galeh, 19, who is already running her own tailoring business and training other women to be tailors..

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VSOs commitments
ensuring a holistic approach to youth programming, recognising that youth are integral to our mission and to development as a whole investing in programmes to support young people, especially poor and marginalised youth, to take action and participate in development working for and with young people to reduce poverty and to enable participation in development by young people as active citizens meaningful participation of young people in shaping our work.

Why are youth part of these commitments?

Demography: youth are a huge global resource Young people form the largest demographic globally
According to the UN Population Division, in 2010 the proportion of the world population under 25 years old was 29% in more developed, 48% in less developed and 60% in least developed countries. When they belong to other marginalised groups, young people are doubly disadvantaged by their age. Young people, especially disaffected and marginalised young men, are often seen as a threat. Fears about their behaviour form common narratives in many countries. Yet often the problem is not that they choose to behave negatively or that they lack skills or motivation but that they lack any real opportunities and openings to use their energy and creativity. Their needs and voices are often overlooked and unheard, they are often excluded from participating or making decisions. They have few opportunities and lack control over their own lives. Barriers to developing young peoples assets need to be removed to ensure young people have choices and are able to have opportunities to build positive, independent lives.

Young people, especially young women are often marginalised

Young people of both sexes are disproportionately affected by current trends. Youth unemployment stood at 13% globally in 2009, and is currently at an all-time high. Many young men and even more young women lack good education and access to jobs, many work long hours in informal settings, lack social protection and can be highly exploited. Illiteracy persists. For example, in Africa a third of young women are illiterate (much higher in some countries) and over 20% of young men are unable to read. Others lack clear pathways to any acceptable livelihood and may turn to crime, sex work and violence. Girls are often pushed into early or forced marriage, often driven by family poverty, and there are high rates of teenage pregnancy in many parts of Africa. Young people are trafficked in many countries. The picture for many disadvantaged young people is bleak and is worsening in many countries in the current economic climate. Forty per cent of young people in Spain are currently unemployed and even more in parts of the global south. Their health is often poor, especially their sexual health 40% of new global HIV infections occur in people aged 15-30. Almost two million young people die each year from preventable causes.

This is a critical time to provide support and opportunities and engage young people in development
Youth is a time of transition and change, and working with men and women when they are young, between childhood and adult lives, can be critical in changing the direction of their lives. This is a critical time to listen to, work with and invest in young people, and to actively engage with them. By doing so we can support their aspirations and enable them to build their skills and experience, identify opportunities and find their voice so that they can contribute now and in future to their own development and that of their community and society. It is important to recognise young peoples assets, what they can bring to society, and to raise expectations of what they can contribute and what is needed to do this well. Working with them to identify where they want to go, what skills they have and what their contributions can be, requires providing them with experience, exposure, new opportunities and strong support, especially when they embark on new initiatives.
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What does VSO mean by young people?

The meaning and definition of youth varies widely between cultures, and VSO will work with the relevant definitions in each context. Some cultures define youth as lasting from 15 to 35, others from 18 to 24, but the concept of youth has some common features across cultures: youth is a time of transition from childhood and dependency on family to being able to support oneself and build a new family. It is a time of change, when new identities are formed and young people try to find their niche. It is a relational concept, defined in relation to other generations, so can be quite flexible: someone may be seen as an adult by their peers but still a youth in front of their elders. The progress from one stage to another is not linear, it moves at a different pace for different people. It is often different for girls. The transition is shaped by social norms and expectations of young people according to their class, wealth, religion and gender, as well as by wider economic realities and changing attitudes. Working with the concept as relational and a time of transition in this open way is important. The experience of youth is hugely diverse. It is a time when opportunities open up new horizons for some, and a lack of choices closes down expectations and hope for others. It is critical that the diversity of experiences and life chances is well recognised in the way VSO talks about and works with young people. They are no more homogeneous than women or men, and ways of working with them, understanding them and meeting their needs must be diverse.

VSO volunteer Katy Bullen training a 25 year old woman of the Burmese Womens Union.

VSO/JonPaul Hedge

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Which young people will VSO work with?

VSO, through its volunteers and partners, will target disadvantaged, hard-to-reach and marginalised young people, those that lack access to resources and good services, who have less education and limited employment opportunities, whose expectations of life may be low. VSO works with young people who lack a voice, who have little experience of decision-making or participating in public forums, and whose poverty, race or class keeps them at the edges of society, under-educated and under-employed. It works to promote volunteering and social engagement with disadvantaged youth in both the UK and the global south.

VSO also provides a range of volunteering opportunities for diverse groups of young people both advantaged and disadvantaged who are selected because of their skills, character and commitment. Our programmes bring young people from diverse backgrounds together to volunteer, learn and act as peer advocates. Working in this way, young people are able to build the skills and confidence of others, and to encourage and enable them to raise their voices, find work, get access to services, and lobby for the rights of young people. In turn they are expected to develop an understanding of development and issues of poverty and deprivation and the realities of trying to work in contexts where choices and opportunities are so curtailed. This learning is expected to be lifelong and influence peers and communities on their return home and to build commitment to and support for development work long-term. Young volunteers can also be engaged in the international volunteer programme and work in any of the priority sectors in VSOs strategy, in particular working with other sectors within communities to increase the acceptance of young people. As it does in all its programming, VSO will use a gender lens when working with young people. Young women and young men everywhere differ in terms of aspirations, opportunities, access to resources, voice and representation, social expectations and behaviour. While many young men feel powerless within the wider community, they may exercise power over young women, who are often those with the least voice and control over their own lives.

VSO/Ben Langdon

VSO/Ben Langdon

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What do young people bring and what support can be offered?

In discussing what young people need and what they bring to development work it is essential to remember their huge diversity. There are many factors that define the opportunities and challenges for young people, wherever they live, including disability, HIV and AIDS status, health status, education levels, whether they are displaced or a refugee, class, race, ethnicity and gender.
What young men and women bring to any development relationship varies. For example, those with more formal education bring certain skills; those with less but who have more experience of working from a young age bring others. Young women will bring a different understanding of the barriers to their progress than young men. They will have different opportunities socially and economically, different approaches to their rights and different perceptions of what those rights are if they believe they have any rights at all. It is essential to know the young people that are getting involved their situation, their aspirations, their experiences of life, their talents and their concerns. By working with young people, VSO and its partners have identified a wide range of attributes and benefits that different young people can bring to development. These include but are not limited to an understanding of youth and its challenges, peer education, humour and energy, a belief in change, organising young people and enabling them to raise their voice and represent youth issues in communities and the wider society, lobbying for resources for young people, negotiating with service providers for addressing youth needs specifically. What young people need from development activities and interventions varies greatly. But drawing from experience to date, it is clear they need to be listened to and be heard, that they need to be involved and participate in shaping projects and programmes that are intended to benefit them, and that they need opportunities and experience. They need to build their knowledge and skills in areas like representation, counselling, advocacy, negotiating, finding and doing work, seeing opportunities in the informal as well as the formal sector, sexual relationships, and health issues. The work both young volunteers, those working with VSO and partners in communities are expected to do, needs to build on their interests and abilities and should include approaches based on art, drama, music, sport and new technologies, as well as more traditional development approaches. All young people need encouragement, to be valued and properly supported, to participate in deciding what they need and why, and how best to approach solving the problems they (and their community) face.

VSO

VSO and Youth

How does VSO want to work with the young people it targets?
There are three core principles governing VSOs work with young people: Applying an integrated approach to youth work, VSO recognises young people as actors, leaders and collaborators in development as well as targets or recipients of development programmes. Participation of young people is essential, supporting young people to move from being targets to actors involved and taking on greater responsibilities and agency in the designing, planning and implementation of development work. Core principles of youth work, such as learning by doing, and supporting young people to be able to make the contributions they want and develop in ways they see as critical, will drive the work with young men and women.
Volunteering is widely recognised as an important mechanism for fostering participation in development. Volunteering promotes social change by contributing to strengthening an individuals agency, and by influencing agenda setting and policy-making. This is being reflected currently in UK policy frameworks (with National and International Citizen Services), and many Southern governments (eg Kenya, Ghana, Uganda) are integrating volunteering as a form of youth participation into youth policies. Some are also committed to increasing training and capacity-building opportunities for young people to enhance the contributions of youth to development. The widely established three-lens approach of working for, with, and supporting development by young people provides a good practice model for VSOs youth programming, from youth volunteering to programming aimed at improving services for young people. Work for young people has been ongoing in VSO programmes, especially in the fields of HIV and AIDS and livelihoods, for many years. International volunteers and local partners, working on behalf of young people, have highlighted the needs of young people with service providers to ensure their equal access to appropriate services. For example, a partner in Nigeria, Daughters of Charity, worked with a VSO international volunteer to raise awareness among leaders and staff about the needs of young people in HIV and AIDS services, and trained young people to become peer educators and provide support to young people. This led to better outcomes in terms of raised awareness, positive behaviour change and reduced stigma.

VSO recognises that work for young people can be strengthened by working directly with young people in the planning, implementation and delivery of this work. Therefore, as a guiding principle, working for and with young people should go hand in hand. This involves listening to them, involving them in programme planning, allowing them to be the actors rather than the subjects of development work. For example, in Haganoy Municipality in the Philippines, VSO international and national youth volunteers worked alongside health workers to raise awareness of tuberculosis (TB) and encouraged greater take-up of treatment. Their support with the development of accessible information and awarenessraising materials for use in schools and communities resulted in 54 new referrals for TB treatment. Working together with young people in this case helped to ensure that messages were accessible to other young people and this resulted in a very positive outcome of more people accessing this service.
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Working effectively together with young people in programming gives them opportunities to develop their skills and their abilities to lead work themselves and support the participation of others in their own communities. This requires ongoing support and self-esteem building, and some partners have paid special attention to this work, developing the confidence and skills of young women and men. For example, after participation in a leadership-training programme run by a VSO National Volunteering partner organisation in India, 21-year-old Nirmala decided to tackle the challenges associated with malaria in her community. Community members were not particularly concerned about sanitation and hygiene, and government officials hadnt visited the village for years despite several complaints about the spread of malaria. Not put off, Nirmala moved on with determination, starting with a door-todoor awareness campaign on cleanliness and collection of data on malaria patients. Her efforts started paying off and there was a visible change in the attitude of both the villagers and the government officials. Nirmalas work also resulted in regular blood-testing camps, availability of malaria tablets, concerned officials visiting the village at regular intervals, villagers adopting healthy and hygienic practices and a much lower incidence of malaria. At a public gathering of around 150-200 people, the District Malaria Eradication Officer congratulated Nirmala on her work. There are different approaches to working on the issues affecting young people, and VSO and partners have a range of methods to use: international volunteers can work for and with young people; young people themselves can take part in exchange programmes and youth volunteering; and some national volunteering programmes can enable youthled development. These approaches are supported by our partners, as are a range of additional approaches such as research, advocacy and lobbying work, international knowledge sharing, youth training, inspiring young people, seed money for youth projects, linking young people through alumni networks, leadership programmes, and alliance building. There is a growing awareness of the value of social networking for some young people.

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VSO/Felicity Thompsonn

Right: VSO supports grassroots organisations in Sierra Leone providing vocational training and business skills for young women like Aissatou Kanu.

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Programming for young women and men

Key principles
All programming needs to be based on several key principles: recognition of the diversity of what young women and men need, what they can offer and contribute, and what approaches are most appropriate in each context recognition of the fact that volunteers, including youth volunteers, can come from across the world and they will include volunteers from the North and the South working in partnership with organisations who know the language, context and issues facing young people in their region or country, who have youth work skills and can co-create projects and allow youth-led programming wherever possible focus on addressing disadvantage, particularly the double disadvantage of youth rigorous monitoring, which will allow VSO and its partners to learn what works best for which young people in different contexts. There will be investment in learning by doing and in identifying what enables which young women and men to bring about change meaningful youth participation and involvement in decisionmaking as well as delivery programme design that enables young people both to benefit directly from the work by building their skills, finding opportunities and providing experience (youth as development) and to contribute as far as possible to development goals (youth for development). The balance between these needs to be judged in each programme. Specifically, youth programming will fall under the broad categories that shape all VSOs work, laid out in People First: 1. Improving the quality of and access to services for poor and marginalised young people 2. Inspiring young people to see how they can make a practical contribution to fighting global poverty, and creating opportunities to do so 3. Influencing governments to develop and implement pro-poor policy, to meet the needs of young people 4. Strengthening civil societies to give youth a voice and enable youth to hold their governments and service providers to account.

Improving the quality of services

Many services, such as health, education, sexual and reproductive health, and vocational training, include young people in their target groups some services are almost exclusively for young people. Yet many young women and men find when they try to access services that they face barriers, especially the attitudes of older staff. A guiding principle for work in this area is that young people should have a say in the shape of these services. Those that work with them (international volunteers and partners) should raise awareness of youth issues with service providers and ensure that young peoples voices and perspectives can be heard and included. For example in Mozambique, Canadian youth shared their experiences of national employment centres with national volunteers, who then worked with the Government to design and roll out appropriate services for young people in employment centres.

Inspiring young people to fight poverty

VSO and its youth programme partners believe that providing volunteering opportunities for young people enables them to be actors both in their own development and as leaders in the development process itself. Through the creation of innovative volunteering opportunities, young people are provided with a sense of agency and voice. They can realise their potential, gain skills and knowledge, and make a significant contribution as partners in development, rather than only being recipients. VSO encourages and supports young people to volunteer in a number of ways, eg through Global Xchange, which is a reciprocal exchange of volunteers from the North and the South visiting and learning from each other, as well as developing projects for development in each location. Projects have been based around issues such as sexual and reproductive health, environmental awareness, working with people with disabilities, promoting young peoples participation, research and advocacy work. To date, 1,400 volunteers from 27 countries have been involved in this programme. The Youth for Development programme has placed young people into VSO programmes in roles that contribute directly to long-term programmes with partners. Roles have included

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supporting organisational development, conducting research, peer education projects and advocacy work, particularly with disabled peoples organisations. Volunteers from the global south are able to volunteer with partner organisations in their own countries to learn, to get experience, to develop new ideas and approaches and to undertake advocacy as well as project implementation. These programmes have enabled young people to grow and develop and also contribute to ongoing work within partner organisations and communities. When young women and men are well supported and involved they are effective in many areas, contributing to positive change in the lives of poor and marginalised people. For example, a young deaf woman volunteer attached to the Gambia Association of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing was able to improve attitudes towards disability and to support young deaf peers in the Gambia to overcome their embarrassment and set up deaf clubs to break down their isolation. These clubs have grown into a platform for raising issues as well as addressing the needs of the members. Through these kinds of programmes young people have found they have value and a voice: The community did not think that youth was important but volunteering has helped them to realise that we are important. They have found the diamond and polished it for us (VSOs Global Xchange in partnership Pattan, Pakistan).

Strengthening civil society to give youth voice and accountability mechanisms

To be effective in tackling poverty, VSO believes that it is essential to build the capacity of young people and their organisations, so they can come together to advocate for their needs and rights and hold their government to account. VSO and its partners work to ensure young people are actively involved in organisations and also build their own civil society organisations, to have a voice and develop youth-led programmes. They are trained in negotiating with government officials and leaders in order to understand what plans and provisions there are for meeting the needs and rights of young women and men, and tracking how well promises and plans are fulfilled. One example of this kind of work is the human rights defenders in northern Thailand, where refugees from Burma, student activists and victims of human rights abuses have fled. There they have organised into community-based organisations, and VSO brought six of them on a study tour to the UK to learn more about human rights and strategies for promoting them in repressive contexts. Through a range of meetings and interactions they were able to raise the profile of human rights violations in Burma in new ways for key people in the UK, and soon after the visit the UK supported the call for Burma to be referred to the International Criminal Court, in 2010.

Influence government to develop and implement propoor policies for young people
VSO, in partnership with government ministries and local governments and working with young people, has supported the development of national youth policies in countries including Kenya and Mozambique. There are global campaigns on reducing the burden of care on women and girls and for girls education. For example in Namibia, girls football was used as a mechanism for advocating for better education for girls. There is real potential for directly engaging young volunteers, both national and international, in advocacy and campaigning work, especially using social networking. In Pakistan, Global Xchange worked on creating youth committees to build the capacities of young people as leaders and active participants in community development. Once they were established they were able to create community dialogues with local council members; one youth forum was invited to become part of a district-wide advisory committee. Through this programme, more than 500 young people have received leadership training and a national youth forum has been created. These interventions will play a role in shaping future development agendas in Pakistan.

VSO provides volunteering programmes for teams of young people from the UK and developing countries to live, work and learn together in cross-cultural pairs in community development placements, organise community action days and live in local host homes.

VSO/Simon Rawles

VSO/Ben Langdon

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Where do we want to see change?

It is important to be clear, both for young people and for the wider community, what change is expected and which young people ought to benefit. Youth need to be part of defining what needs changing and what would define success.
The kinds of changes seen through youth programming to date in VSOs country programmes and in specific youth programming, include: getting young voices into policy, and key decision-making young people having better access to appropriate services, delivered respectfully and involving young people attitude and behaviour change, by communities, leaders and government officials towards young people, and within young people themselves for example, young people taking responsibility, speaking out and participating in development building effective youth leaders for social change, especially in areas that directly affect them increased confidence, skills and abilities of young women so that they can break out of stereotyped gender roles and participate in a wide range of activities, opportunities and leadership programme partners working with youth to increase their participation and voice more responsiveness of service providers to young peoples needs. As youth programming grows, we will build our understanding of young peoples aspirations and potential, and what matters most to them for building a better future. It will also be important to see changes within VSO to ensure staff and partners work more effectively with young people. We will need to determine how to work participatively with young women and young men, how to ensure that young people are fully integrated in VSOs approach to development, and how to monitor and learn from this kind of work. In order to support this, an implementation framework for youth work in VSO will be produced to facilitate the application of these policy principles into existing and future youth programme development. The framework will support the development of best practice, map out how to effectively monitor and develop programming and allow flexibility to adapt the framework to the country context.

References
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 VSOs Theory of Change: Bringing People Together to Fight Poverty. VSO. <http://vsoint.org/Images/theory-of-change-Jan11_tcm76-29269.pdf> http://www.un.org/esa/population/unpop.htm http://social.un.org/index/Youth/YouthintheUN/YouthandtheMDGs.aspx http://social.un.org/youthyear/launch.htm http://cprc.abrc.co.uk/pdfs/57Moore.pdf Volunteering and Social Activism. Pathways for participation in human development. http://www.unv.org/en/news-resources/news/doc/unv-chief-sees-youth.html http://www.ygproject.org/guide/introduction/three-lens-approach

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ISBN 978-1-903697-15-3

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