This study represents an encouraging body of evidence, both primary and secondary, which will inform future practice and policymaking with regard to young women and men’s contributions towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The learnings provide important insight that will support the design and implementation of youth programming. It examines five programs across three youth-focused or youth-led organisations: Plan International UK, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and AIESEC. The study addressed three research questions: 1. Understanding roles: What meaningful roles do young people identify with in order to help achieve the SDGs? To what extent are these roles influenced by gender or any other identity? 2. Capturing “value add”: What evidence can we find to demonstrate how young people “add value”—or their efficacy —and contribute towards achieving the SDGs? To what extent is this mediated by gender or any other identity? 3. Recommendations: What are the strategic recommendations that will enhance how young people can contribute towards the SDGs? The findings show that the first step in effectively harnessing young women and men’s contributions is to actively listen, acknowledge and act upon information learned—supporting the roles that young people want to assume and cultivate. We found that initiatives often do not fully identify or support the emerging roles that young people selfdefine. While young women and men often want to be peer educators, some also express aspirations to go far beyond this. They may want to be educators; or leaders engaged in changing negative social norms; or citizens with status, striving to reduce inequality and social differences within their broader and intergenerational social networks, which may include parents, community leaders, project staff and governments. This means it is imperative to explore and acknowledge, at the start of any initiative, how young people want to contribute in terms, for example, of their roles and how these may be redefined over time. We found that young people, parents, non-governmental organisation (NGO) staff, government officials, and decisionmakers use and understand the concept of “value” in several ways. While this may sometimes be consistent and overlapping, it is at other times divergent. We found that measuring these different aspects of “added value” remains challenging, especially given the absence of systematic methods to first identify and then track magnitude and direction of change. The challenge is compounded by difficulties in establishing a valid counterfactual case for comparison. This means that many important contributions that young people are making towards achieving the SDGs are undervalued, or not acknowledged at all.This study represents an encouraging body of evidence, both primary and secondary, which will inform future practice and policymaking with regard to young women and men’s contributions towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The learnings provide important insight that will support the design and implementation of youth programming. It examines five programs across three youth-focused or youth-led organisations: Plan International UK, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and AIESEC. The study addressed three research questions: 1. Understanding roles: What meaningful roles do young people identify with in order to help achieve the SDGs? To what extent are these roles influenced by gender or any other identity? 2. Capturing “value add”: What evidence can we find to demonstrate how young people “add value”—or their efficacy —and contribute towards achieving the SDGs? To what extent is this mediated by gender or any other identity? 3. Recommendations: What are the strategic recommendations that will enhance how young people can contribute towards the SDGs? The findings show that the first step in effectively harnessing young women and men’s contributions is to actively listen, acknowledge and act upon information learned—supporting the roles that young people want to assume and cultivate. We found that initiatives often do not fully identify or support the emerging roles that young people selfdefine. While young women and men often want to be peer educators, some also express aspirations to go far beyond this. They may want to be educators; or leaders engaged in changing negative social norms; or citizens with status, striving to reduce inequality and social differences within their broader and intergenerational social networks, which may include parents, community leaders, project staff and governments. This means it is imperative to explore and acknowledge, at the start of any initiative, how young people want to contribute in terms, for example, of their roles and how these may be redefined over time. We found that young people, parents, non-governmental organisation (NGO) staff, government officials, and decisionmakers use and understand the concept of “value” in several ways. While this may sometimes be consistent and overlapping, it is at other times divergent. We found that measuring these different aspects of “added value” remains challenging, especially given the absence of systematic methods to first identify and then track magnitude and direction of change. The challenge is compounded by difficulties in establishing a valid counterfactual case for comparison. This means that many important contributions that young people are making towards achieving the SDGs are undervalued, or not acknowledged at all.
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What's the evidence? Youth Engagement and the Sustainable Development Goals
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