Thematic Areas: Youth and Gender
With young people aged 14-25 constituting 50% of the global unemployed, and up to 70% of Africa’s urban population under the age of 25, NI believes that the Millennium Development Goals cannot be achieved without ensuring youth participation in development, by building their capacity, and creating an enabling environment aimed at mainstreaming youth engagement in development strategies.
NI works towards mainstreaming engagement of youth/women in policy planning & development strategies towards attainment of the Millennium Development Goals.
Current activities include:
- Ghetto Film Trust: Funded by Pact/USAID, the Ghetto Film Trust has undertaken a community based media and cultural initiative on Peace-Building and Reconciliation in Kenya. NI is leading in the management of this project, and assisting GFT in future programme planning
- Since 2004 we have been working with UN-HABITAT to devise and implement approaches for engaging urban youth in all its programmes. NI facilitated the development of a youth engagement strategy for UN-HABITAT to present an integrated approach to urban youth led development. More recently, the Institute was involved in designing and operationalizing UN-HABITAT’s Opportunities Fund for Urban Youth Led Development
- UN-HABITAT: Youth empowerment through knowledge based advocacy for improved quality of life. NI developed the proposal for partnership support aimed at addressing youth engagement in water and sanitation, housing and infrastructure, climate change, land rights and governance.
Past projects undertaken include:
- Schools as Centres of Care & Support project: As part of our institutional capacity development support, NI has worked with the Schools as Centres of Care and Support in South Africa, Swaziland and Zambia (Media in Education Trust, Mar-July’08) conducting a programme evaluation and facilitating design of a monitoring and evaluation system for scaling up the project throughout SADC and
- Scoping and mobilising youth led and youth serving stakeholders in the governmental, local government, CSO, and private sectors towards the establishment of One Stop Youth Centres in Kampala, Dar-es-Salaam, and Lusaka, and Free Town for UNHABITAT