The Voices of Youth project has received funding from various donors since 2012 to date, including the UN Democracy Fund, the Danish Civil Society Fund, the UNDP, and the Commonwealth Foundation. The project responds to rising concerns over insufficient attention to critical issues affecting youth in Ghana and the lack of structures for mainstreaming youth into national policymaking.

The project is designed to provide a long-term mechanism for youth to articulate their concerns and to make policy input. Under this project, YOTA convenes the Voices of Youth Coalition, comprising over 500 youth-led organisations that focus on shaping the development policy discourse in the country. A directory of these youth organisations has been developed. It provides a one-stop point of information and a much-needed source for collaboration and exchange of information among actors in the youth development sector.

Through this project, YOTA has trained hundreds of youth researchers and advocates and facilitated the youth action research that resulted in the crowdsourcing of the Ghana Youth Manifesto in 2012, the People’s National Youth Policy in 2016, and MYVOICE MYVOTE in 2020. These flagship publications and platform have become the main advocacy tools for youth policy action among youth groups across the country.

YOTA also hosts the Youth Policy Dialogue Series across major cities in the country, offering much-needed multi-stakeholder platforms for deliberating on youth issues and forging common actions informed by the position.