Today’s youth generation is the largest ever, with over 50% of the world under 25 years of age. The vast majority of young people live in developing countries, and close to half live on less than $2 a day.1 After 2015, the ‘youth bulge’2 in developing countries is likely to start levelling off.3 This means that there is a limited window of time in which to reap the so-called ‘demographic dividend’4 presented by this large, youthful population. For this to happen young people around the world must grow up to be healthy, educated, employed and empowered citizens who have financial security, a meaningful stake in governance and whose rights are respected and upheld.
As the global youth population has expanded, so too has an awareness of the need to address the diverse needs of young people. Alongside this is an increasing recognition of the importance of engaging young people constructively in economic and social development. Recent events in North Africa, the Middle East, Brazil, Turkey and elsewhere have served as potent reminders of the power of young people to demand and bring about dramatic change when their needs are not being met. Increasingly donors, NGOs and governments are turning their attention to how young people’s energy and skills can be channelled constructively to further development goals.
Youth leadership development has much to offer this debate. Investing in youth leadership has the potential to benefit not only the exceptional young people who will go on to become the political, business and civil society leaders of the future, but also and more significantly the much larger population of those who have been marginalised and disadvantaged by society. Youth leadership not only benefits young people themselves; it has a positive impact on their communities and wider society
This mapping provides an analysis of the contribution that youth leadership can and is making to youth development across the Global South.
The mapping reveals that youth leadership has its greatest potential when tied into youth (specifically youth-led) development. Youth-led development – in contrast with individual youth leadership – gives all young people a stake in deciding how resources are allocated and allows them to play a role in implementing, managing and overseeing development in their communities and wider society. Youthled development capitalises on the immense energy, creativity and ideas of young people while also giving them a rightful place, as a third of the global population, at the decision-making table. Such a vision has been articulated in many international declarations, but governments and other actors around the world have struggled to make it happen.
The mapping begins in Chapter 1 with the theory of youth leadership, setting out the definitions, the benefits and the ingredients of a successful youth leadership programme. It ends with a discussion of the purpose of youth leadership development and suggests that this can be framed in a number of ways. It argues that youth leadership is divided into two distinct areas: on the one hand a focus on developing individual political, cultural, civil society and business leaders, and on the other hand a focus on giving a broad base of young people including the most marginalised the opportunity to build essential life skills, promoting a broader youth-led development ideal. It asserts that youth leadership is most effective when blending both approaches, with clear developmental goals as its basis.
Chapter 2 turns to a mapping of perceptions and policies around youth leadership among the key actors in the Global South: governments, donors, NGOs and the private sector. It notes that while there is a growing consensus around the importance of prioritising youth development, many actors continue to view young people through the lens of ‘beneficiaries’ rather than as ‘partners’ or active ‘leaders’ of change. Only a relatively small number of actors – mostly led by the non-governmental sector - focus explicitly on cultivating youth leadership with even fewer promoting youth-led development in its fullest form. Nonetheless, their successes are beginning to draw the attention of others in the youth sector as they seek to learn more about what can be achieved and how to do so.
Chapter 3 maps practice in youth leadership development across the Global South. Current approaches are grouped under five headings according to their primary focus: formal leadership development, youth partnerships, youth-driven action, youth voice, and youth governance. Overall, it is difficult to make a systematic comparative assessment of the different approaches because of the lack of measurement data. Whilst each approach has its merits in practice, fewer implementers are tackling the more difficult and underfunded areas: promoting youth voice and youth governance and supporting youth-driven action. This chapter argues that real value could be added to overall youth leadership efforts by investing in these key, underfunded areas.
The final chapter reflects on what these findings imply for governments, donors and civil society actors wishing to promote youth leadership development.
It argues that youth leadership programming should be developed with reference to the following parameters:
• Linking youth leadership to youth-led development – by looking not only at the development of youth leaders but how those leaders can have access to decision-makers and how policy and practice spaces can be widened to accommodate youth leadership.
• Rooted in the local context – by drawing on knowledge of specific localised cultural and structural barriers and how to address them.
• Ambitious beyond local impact – by seizing the opportunity to set out a broader, transformative vision to which programmes and organisations should be able to contribute
• Modelling values – by investing in organisations that embody the values of youth leadership development as reflected, for example, in their governance structures and human resource management.
It suggests that there are currently a number of key opportunities that youth leadership development programming should seek to take advantage of:
• The opportunity to develop the presence and leadership of young people in the seminal global policy debates and decisions of our time.
• The opportunity to choose a development focus reflective of young people’s priorities as expressed in consistent themes over recent consultations.
• The opportunity to address the current lack of measuring tools by developing and piloting a youth leadership measurement framework through the five years of the programme.
• The opportunity to build on the minimal evidence base on best practice in youth leadership.
• The opportunity to adapt and replicate youth leadership models for future scale up.
• The opportunity to invest in the neglected area of strengthening the voice and action of national youth sectors.
• The opportunity to invest in the vital but underfunded areas of youth voice and youth governance.