Youth Advisory Board

The AU-EU Youth Action Lab is a new project that works with young people across Africa and Europe. The goal is to collaborate, implement and scale up their own initiatives to create positive change linked to global challenges! 

The Youth Action Lab will provide the opportunity for youth initiatives to apply for Power Shifting grants. This means that youth initiatives will receive funding to implement their own ideas and solutions that facilitate stability, resilience, financial security and organizational capacity. The Youth Action Lab has 4 different grants:

1. Innovation Grants: to support the work of young people that is innovative and linked to global challenges.
2. Entrepreneurship Grants: to support young people working on entrepreneurship and employment opportunities.
3. Representation Grants: to support young people that face marginalization and raise and amplify their voices.
4. Cooperation Grants: to support young people from Africa and Europe to collaborate on their initiatives

Furthermore, the Youth Action Lab provides a unique, safe and inclusive (online) space for young African and European changemakers to connect and co-create together! 

The Youth Action Lab is implemented by a Consortium of Oxfam, Restless Development Uganda and the European Youth Forum and will provide opportunities for youth initiatives in Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe and selected countries in the European Union.

The AU-EU Youth Action Lab project is funded by the European Union.

A Youth Advisory Board at the heart of the Project

Restless Development Uganda will set-up and host a Youth Advisory Board (YAB) and is currently recruiting its members! We want to set-up a YAB including 12 young people that are from Africa and Europe. They will guide and lead on how we will promote the grants and which organizations and groups will receive the grants.

The YAB ensures that youth themselves are in the lead of the work done by the Youth Action Lab. We want to ensure that the action is meaningful to young people by implementing, reflecting and learning together with the YAB. We want to shift power to young people, as we believe in your expertise and skills. Nothing about youth, without youth!

Roles and Responsibilities of the Youth Advisory Board

As part of the Youth Advisory Board you will play an important role in the project. We want to truly empower young people’s own initiatives, create new connections and amplify their voices to the African Union and European Union.

The YAB will start with further co-creating the four Funding Mechanisms of the Youth Action Lab. The outreach, selection and monitoring criteria of the action’s grants will be further designed together. This co-creation will ensure that youth themselves are in the lead and that all work surrounding the grant supports youth needs, priorities and answers to the reality of young people in their diversity (for example realistic reporting requirements). Together we will develop strategies, plans and procedures to guide the coordination and implementation of the action’s grants. Key co creation activities will include;

• Co-design and implement the Youth Action Lab’s inclusive funding mechanism and sharpen the action’s grant modalities.
• Co-creation of inclusive and participatory youth outreach and promotion strategies for the Youth Action lab’s grants.
• Further design inclusive eligibility and selection criteria for the Youth Action Lab’s powershifting grants. 
• Co-design the Youth Action Lab’s linking and learning strategy.
• Co-designing specific guidelines of Meaningful Youth Engagement (MYE) for the project and ensuring that the principles of MYE are observed across all the areas of the project.

Decision Making: The YAB is a key decision making structure of the Youth Action Lab. It will play a significant role in advising and decision making alongside the Consortium’s Project Coordination Committee – throughout the project and specifically as part of annual strategy and workplan reflections. 

Evaluation and Selection of Youth-led Initiatives: One of the key decisions they will lead on is the selection of youth initiatives to be funded by the Action. The YAB members will co-lead the evaluation and selection of funding proposals submitted by young people. Their recommendations will be leading in the selection of youth organizations to receive funding.

Outreach and mobilization: We will tap into the YAB’s collective knowledge and unique lived experiences to ensure that the principles of Meaningful Youth Engagement are observed throughout the project. The YAB will also support youth engagement and mobilization at the community level. We will tap into YAB networks and their expertise to map out relevant youth leaders to be engaged in activities across the Youth Action Lab. Advice from the YAB will sharpen the outreach mechanisms to ensure we reach and are accessible to youth-led initiatives in their diversity and especially those that represent and/or work with marginalized youth.

Youth-led monitoring and evaluation: The YAB will further define and refine the Youth Action lab’s indicators. They will provide guidance on how to engage young people in the feedback, monitoring, evaluation, and reporting processes. Ensuring that reporting is a meaningful exercise to young people in terms of reflection and learning. The YAB will support the mid-term review and final evaluation. We envisage producing an annual report outlining the key findings and recommendations and a number of virtual outputs such as blogs, briefs, videos, illustrations or social media posts that are more accessible to a diversity of audiences/young people.

Expected Time-Investment

The Youth Advisory Board is envisioned to start up during July 2024 in which together we will develop concrete ways of working, timelines and action plans. The Youth Action Lab project runs until February 2028 and we hope for a long-term commitment to together engage as Consortium and YAB members from the start to finish of the project. 

It is currently expected that participation in the YAB will take around an average of 16 weeks per year, /1 day per week, with distinct moments of more intense collaboration. We expect that the first year will be a bigger time investment compared to the years after, because of the inception phase. You can find the preliminary planning for the first year below. In between these key moments, there might be other meetings planned to discuss together. We also want to further co-create our ways of working together with you and determine together what the workload will exactly look like.

Month & Activity

2024

July :Online induction training

August : A face-to-face co-creation workshop in Uganda to develop the 4 Funding Mechanisms

September :Support to the outreach to youth to promote the calls for proposals

November: Evaluation and selection of youth grantees that responded to calls for proposals

• Innovation Grants
• Entrepreneurship Grants
• Representation Grants

2025

January-June :Monthly key online moments to:

• Jointly reflect on learning and sharing strategies and activities online and offline
•  Jointly reflect on needs and interests from youth grantees and the response we can provide as a project
• Actively explore together what kind of linkages between grantees can be facilitated

July: Online workshop to reflect on the first round of support to youth-led initiatives and looking ahead to the next calls for proposals.

What You can expect from the Youth Action Lab Consortium:

Support: We are committed as a consortium to work in a meaningful way with you throughout the project. This means that we are committed to including you in decision-making from start to finish. We want to stretch that we will always support you in keeping the workload doable and meaningful for you, and give flexibility in your work investment according to your needs. We will provide translation for key moments in the project, so you have the ability to talk in a language that you feel more comfortable in.

Induction: We will conduct an extensive induction training for the Youth Advisory Board to support your effective engagement throughout the duration of the Youth Action Lab. This induction training will cover a wide range of topics and prepare the YAB to efficiently lead the action. We will work together to define key guiding principles and a set of agreements that underpins how YAB members  will work together and the meaningful collaboration between the YAB and the Consortium. These will set a base for peer accountability and collective responsibility, and as such, shall be respected by all YAB members and the Consortium alike.

Compensation: as a YAB member you will be hired by Restless Development as a long-term consultant and compensated for your time-investment and expertise that you provide to the Youth Action Lab Project. The compensation will be on a monthly basis, alongside support packages for online connectivity when needed. Any travel required as a YAB member will be compensated. Additionally, we will also actively offer a range of opportunities for your own development and further engagement over the project timeframe.

Composition and Selection of the Youth Advisory Board Members

The Youth Advisory Board will comprise 12 members and seeks to bring together young leaders who are actively creating change in their communities and beyond. We aim for a diverse group with different backgrounds, lived experiences and can represent the voices of their peers in areas such as governance, education, gender, environment, climate justice, employment, health and advocacy. 

The composition of the YAB will be non-discriminatory, bringing together young people in all their diversity. We will actively aim to ensure representation of marginalized rightsholder groups.

The Youth Advisory Board will be set-up through an open selection process in which interested young people from across Africa can apply to become a member. In total, 10 young people will be selected. Together with 2 young board members of the European Youth Forum, they will make up the Youth Advisory Board!

The following criteria will be used for the selection of young people to join the YAB:

• You are excited to contribute to the development and implementation of a youth-led fund mechanism!
• You have the intention to commit being part of the YAB for a longer period of time, ideally for the full project period (3.5 years)
• You are an active young advocate part of a youth-led organization, collective, group or movement (formal or informal)
• You respect others in all their diverse identities, you place trust in the knowledge and capabilities of others and you have an open attitude towards their views and opinions.
• You can build on your own knowledge and experience as young leader in creating social change in one or more of the following areas: youth-led development, governance, education, gender, environment, climate justice, employment, health, rights based initiatives, community development and advocacy
• Experience in working with grants or budget management is an asset.
• You are between 18 and 30 years old
• You are a current resident in one of the project’s implementing countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe
• You have a working proficiency in English. French and Portuguese are an asset.

Conclusion:

The Youth Advisory Board is a pivotal strategy to involve young people in shaping the Youth Action Lab, actively contributing to more inclusive, responsive, collaborative and youth-centered programming. Through this approach, the Youth Action lab envisions a future where young people are at the forefront of development, actively participating in decision-making and leading with local, youth-led solutions.

You will need to fill out a short application to be considered for the Youth Advisory Board. Alternatively, you can share a short video (maximum 5 minutes), responding to the questions in the application form. It is up to you! 

Got more questions? Want to learn more about the Youth Advisory Board? Reach us on [email protected]

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