Leveraging Institutions

Continental bodies, national and subnational governments, private-sector companies, civic institutions, and other organisations such as educational institutions, civic associations, and trade unions control resources and policies that affect youth lives. YOTA works with institutions to make them more responsive to and supportive of youth aspirations.

Ensuring youth access to institutions and decision-making

We support institutions that engage youth as leaders and entrepreneurs towards meaningful youth participation and input. We empower youth to effectively participate and make inputs that strengthen institutions as they create policies, business strategies, and products that are relevant for their constituents and customers.

Developing laws, policies, products, and services that address youth needs

We support youth to make inputs that help shape how institutions create legal frameworks and youth-friendly policies and services. We create the enabling environment for youth to make inputs into legislative processes that lead to the realisation of positive outcomes for themselves and society in general, including young entrepreneurs’ access to seed capital, election laws that prevent exploitation of young voters, and health services that are financially and physically accessible to youth. Ultimately, our approach will ensure that legal and policy frameworks and practices that affect youth actually account for youth needs and youth participation, consider the rights and contributions of youth across all social groups, and lead to the creation of more responsive institutions that provide the right services to young people.

Encouraging relevant learning at education institutions

Education institutions are key to delivering quality and relevant teaching and learning across all levels of education systems. Their work is fundamental to scaling skills building to broad youth populations. But often, these education institutions are either embroiled in bureaucracies that are slow to adapt to the rapidly changing world of work or that favour certain groups at the expense of others. Changing them requires a nuanced understanding of their incentives and disincentives and steady support for champions of reform. Based on a collective understanding, we support education institutions and teachers to build 21st-century skills, grounded in curricula that account for the skills needed in the world of today and the future, and linked to services that offer better access to realistic steps toward future careers and civic engagement. We are convinced that this approach will help ensure that youth can build productive pathways to adulthood.

Protection & Resilience

Youth are essential actors in contributing to peacebuilding processes. They are among the most affected by conflict and can play important roles as agents of positive change. YOTA creates opportunities for youth to become engaged as change-makers and peacebuilders in their communities and wider societies, and promote a constructive vision of youth as leaders. In this regard, we strengthen local resilience and equip youth with the values, knowledge and skills to exchange, communicate and cooperate peacefully across social and cultural boundaries, and to meaningfully engage in civic processes.

We strengthen youth capacities to counter false or violent narratives. We elaborate knowledge products and training materials to support local youth groups. We foster youth participation in peace and security decision-making processes, and support the design and implementation of youth-driven actions and initiatives for resilience and peacebuilding.

We give visibility to youth participating in peacebuilding processes and raise stakeholder awareness of the role of youth in Prevention of Violent Extremism.

We develop communications actions (both online and offline) that sensitise on resilience, peacebuilding and violence prevention, support research actions on violence and radicalisation to better understand the social, political and economic factors that lead to violent extremism and foster knowledge exchange and transfer of good practices at local and regional levels.