After several months of hard work conducting research on how to promote women economic empowerment in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala; Youth Excel's Issue-Based Collaborative Network (ICON) participants present their main findings to key stakeholders in the community. Through youth-led locally developed research, youth-led and youth-serving organizations have identified key aspects to promote economic local development and prevent gender-based violence (GBV) in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. The knowledge products produced by the ICON participants include recommendations to different stakeholders so youth realities can be deeply heard and understood.
Youth Excel supports young leaders and youth-led and youth-serving organizations around the globe to use research and data to improve their own positive youth development programs. It helps young leaders leverage the research and data that they produce in intergenerational learning and dialogue to strengthen local, national, and global development outcomes.
What is an Issue-Based Collaborative Network (ICON)?
Youth Excel’s ICON whole-system-in-the-room model convenes a diverse group of youth-led and youth-serving organizations and groups to form a place-based collaborative that collectively tackles a shared problem. The participants build skills in Research-to-Change (implementation research), conduct research to strengthen their own work, share data, create new knowledge collectively, learn from each other, and produce knowledge products to support youth advocacy and engage with local decision-makers.
Quetzaltenango ICON: locally known as Oxlajuj Kat Noj (in indigenous k’iche’ language), tackled the following themes:
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Economic empowerment of indigenous women
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Preventing Gender Based Violence (GBV)
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Local economic development
Knowledge products produced by the ICON Quetzaltenango can be found in Spanish here.