Young at Heart: How to Be Youth-Centred in the 21st Century

This document describes the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF)'s journey of youth services and participation. IPPF's Strategic Framework (2016-2022) shows how the Federation is embracing young people as partners and ensuring that young people are truly at the centre of everything they do. It is meant to be an introduction for decision makers, service providers, and youth leaders on how IPPF can build on its legacy and transition to a youth-centred approach.

As detailed here, a youth-centred approach can be a strategic vehicle to promote sexual rights as human rights, and empowerment is a crucial part of that. Youth programming should enhance understandings of respect, equity, solidarity, freedom of sexual expression, protection of bodily integrity and freedom from stigma and discrimination - not only among young people, but among their parents, other adults, and the communities they live in. The model, depicted on page 4, suggests that it is possible to promote young people's wellbeing and their ability to exercise their rights by delivering youth-centred programming that changes socio-ecological conditions and interactions.

Principles underlying the model include:

1. Young people are sexual beings, and their sexuality should be a source of pleasure that contributes to their overall fulfilment and happiness.
2. Young people are agents of change: They have the capacity and agency to fight for their own sexual rights and also the rights of others.
3. Young people's experiences, perspectives, opinions, and aspirations must be at the core of efforts to realise their sexual rights.
4. Young people's rights and participation are central to all sexual and reproductive health programmes, service delivery, comprehensive sexuality education, and policymaking.
5. Youth programming can support young people to feel empowered and to negotiate rewarding, safe, and loving relationships.
6. Young people's intra- and intergenerational relationships and transitions, in their unique cultural and political contexts, influence their sexual rights as they grow up and thus must be taken into account in youth programming.

The document explores what the youth-centred model looks like in practice. For example, whatever the context, youth-centred programming means making sure that young people have safe and participatory spaces where they can interact with their peers and other people. According to IPPF, young people experience high levels of stigma, applied by others or to themselves, and this prevents them from seeking health services, feeling good about themselves, and asserting their rights. Safe spaces can support young people to (re)gain a sense of agency and identity, and can also enable others to feel more solidarity with youth. The model takes into account power relationships within and between generations, finding that working with adults is key to building supportive communities. This may mean working with parents of peer educators and with influential religious and community leaders.

IPPF has developed progress markers and indicators using best practice from a range of research and organisational guidance, including: research on engaging children in research (University of Brighton, Johnson et al 2014); evaluations of child participation and empowerment published by a range of non-governmental organisations; and lessons on "whole systems approaches" to health settings. In brief, they include:

• The governing board and management of the organisation place young people into positions of governance.
• Staff and service providers are trained in values, capabilities, and skills relating to youth involvement and non-discrimination.
• Situational analysis of youth sensitivity and involvement is applied across all programmes, at all stages of the programme cycle.
• The organisation has in place ethical protocols for working with young people, including child protection policies, to protect staff and young people.
• Adults and young people have mutually respectful relationships, and young people are entrusted with substantive roles in programmatic work.
• Young people can access programmes and services within safe and participatory spaces.
• The organization utilises contextually specific indicators that reflect local young people's vision of what it means to be youth-centred.
• There is a youth-centred strategic business plan that integrates youth participation across the organisation.

"An important aspect of monitoring any youth-centred strategic plan will be to assess how young people have been involved in its development and ongoing implementation and assessment."

Click here to access the report in PDF in French.
Click here to access the report in PDF in Spanish.