Youth Advisory Councils (YAC) are a youth engagement strategy used by programs and organizations to positively incorporate youth voices and help build the capacity of youth participants. While evidence of the effectiveness of YACs is mostly anecdotal and would benefit from a deeper body of research into their overall impact and effectiveness, there is an established practice to operationalize youth engagement within institutions (USAID, 2009 & 2014). Some early lessons learned include the need for careful and early consideration for how to meaningfully engage young people in the co-creation and management of a YAC. While the purpose of YACs (alternatively known as a Youth Advisory Group or a Youth Advisory Board) may vary across projects, YACs can offer stakeholders an important way to solicit youth insights or feedback on program design, implementation, and evaluation; help define outcomes that are relevant to young peoples’ needs; compliment or deepen existing youth engagement strategies; or provide young people the opportunity to directly support program processes, outputs, and outcomes in ways that contribute to sustainability and scale, while also building the skills of young people themselves. The purpose of this brief is to offer projects and organizations and organizing framework for the formation of a YAC, including what questions to consider before doing so.
