Recommendations from the YIELD Project
This article highlights key findings from the Youth Investment, Engagement, and Leadership Development (YIELD) Project’s report, Young People Advancing Sexual and Reproductive Health: Toward a New Normal. We explore how the results and recommendations are relevant for decision makers, program managers, and others who design and implement youth family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) programs.
Currently, one sixth of the world’s population is between 10 and 24 years old. This means that 1.8 billion people—the largest generation of young people in history—are entering their reproductive years.
To make the best reproductive health decisions for themselves and their futures, these young people need information, tools, and resources. But this does not happen in a vacuum. Youth programs are more efficient and effective when they are planned and implemented with the full participation and leadership of young people themselves. And this requires a transformation of adolescent and youth programs—from a field for young people to one with young people.
How can we make youth participation the “new normal?”
How do we engage young people as genuine participants and leaders, maximize their contributions, and move this model into the mainstream? We can look to the Youth Investment, Engagement, and Leadership Development (YIELD) Project for guidance.
In 2019, the YIELD Project published a report synthesizing global evidence on how to realize youth participation in the field of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). It provides three clear calls to action for the global community:
- Work with youth as partners
- Collaborate with others advancing youth participation and leadership in SRHR
- Establish a shared vision
Below, we pair the calls to action with specific implementation guidance from the report, in order to clearly draw out practical steps that decision makers, program managers, and others in the family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) community can take as they work to mainstream youth-responsive FP/RH programming—whether at the local, sub-national, national, or global level.
CALL TO ACTION 1: Work with youth as partners
Young people are the experts in their own lives—and their creativity, passion, and insight can help solve a range of issues related to FP/RH. However, too often, youth aren’t engaged systematically, they don’t represent the populations being served, or institutions ignore young peoples’ professional development needs. The following recommendations will help organizations fully engage with youth in a more comprehensive, holistic way.