The Voices of Youth Coalition is a national mechanism for youth-led advocacy for a more inclusive Ghanaian society, where young people are actively engaged in shaping current and future development agendas.

Given rising concerns over insufficient attention to critical issues affecting youth in Ghana and the inadequate structures for mainstreaming youth into national policy-making, the Coalition provides an opportunity for youth to articulate their concerns and to make policy input.

Formed in January 2012 as the main mechanism through which the flagship Ghana Youth Manifesto was developed, the Voices of Youth Coalition comprises young people and their organisations from all 16 regions of Ghana, including local youth groups, student associations, and youth-focused NGOs, among others. The Coalition also benefits from the support of a pool of active stakeholders, including UN and international development agencies, civil society organisations, and the private sector.

The Coalition’s youth-led participatory approach actively involves youth in every stage of organising, advocacy and policy influencing. By co-creating feedback mechanisms, fostering peer-led initiatives, and providing ongoing training and capacity building, the Coalition empowers youth by building skills for leadership, community engagement, action research, stakeholder engagement, among others.

The success of the Voices of Youth Coalition is evidenced by its ability to crowdsource the Ghana Youth Manifesto in 2012, which has become a model for evidence-based advocacy for many other youth processes in Ghana and elsewhere. The success is also evidence by the youth-led research that led to the creation of the People’s National Youth Policy in 2016, which has had a heavy influence on the current National Youth Policy 2022-2032. In 2024, the Coalition escalates its groundbreaking leadership in evidence-based advocacy through the youth-led research that has produced the Ghana Youth Barometer.