Youth-led organisations are in a unique position to develop and implement initiatives that address issues from a youth perspective and offer solutions that respond to the diverse realities of young people. USAID funded a programme through Jamaican partners to promote healthy lifestyles amongst Jamaican youth, addressing sexual health and violence prevention through youth-led peer education and outreach.

Founded as part of the USAID-funded JASTYLE Project, the Jamaica Youth Advocacy Network (JYAN) has grown into an independent NGO working closely with the national government, civil society, national and international NGOs and the school system to address issues of democracy and youth participation. It focuses on: adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights, violence prevention and arts and culture in Jamaica. Working from the local level up, JYAN has developed links to key decision-makers in national and multilateral policy and funding bodies.

Problems addressed

• Need for youth-led partners to spearhead advocacy and practice;
• Lack of understanding of integrated youth development work: perception of young people as “problems” or “threats” rather than members and leaders in a democracy.

Objectives

• To increase awareness of international and national policies and programmes that impact adolescents and youth;
• To facilitate youth participation and inclusion in decision-making processes across the island;
• To facilitate improvements in the policy environment in Jamaica relating to adolescent/youth development.

Youth as leaders

JYAN was youth-initiated. Young people form 100% of agency staff, developing services and building governance/representation structures.

Youth as partners

As well as advising donor staff and delivering peer-to-peer services, young people co-develop and co-manage services.

Process

• A youth advisory board was set up, which went on to create JYAN to sustain their work.
• From 2005 to 2008 JYAN was led and staffed by young people on a voluntary basis.
• Continued contact and support from USAID.
• Support from the Global Fund and the Jamaican Ministry of Health and Environment
• JYAN document the experiences and highlight the information gleaned from the young people who participate in conferences, interventions, projects or trainings.
• This then feeds back in information to guide other processes, e.g., in media engagement or sensitising other young people.
• Communiques and calls to action produced by young conference participants are used to build an information base for future reference.

Results

• Through the Youth Help Project, adolescents/teenagers who were identified as ‘school dons’ (bullies) have demonstrated positive behaviour change and a self perception as positive leaders in school.
• JYAN is represented on an ad hoc and permanent basis in a number of policy fora with the Jamaican government and various international agencies.

“We learn the value of gaining respect from our adult partners by informing ourselves and documenting our experiences. Without this we would not have been able to represent fully the concerns and needs of the young people we serve. ...We learned to appreciate and respect deadlines, authority, combining passion with commitment and the opinions of our adult partners. Thus we were able to teach government, donor agencies, technocrats and other stakeholders a critical lesson to see young people way beyond the idea of us as just an asset to policy planning and programming.” Jaevion Nelson, JYAN

Lessons learned

• The set up and support for youth-led organisations can be very straightforward.
• Feedback indicates that young people reached through this work have joined the network because they admire the direct youth-on-youth approach/methodology and they feel comfortable sharing their challenges and concerns.
• Particular administrative and managerial capacities required: three full-time staff and a core volunteer board of five to ten members giving ten hours per week.

Potential challenges

• Lack of resources (human, financial, and infrastructural). So far this has been mitigated by the dedicated voluntary involvement of the core team and contributions in kind (space and administrative resources) from partners.

For further information contact:

http://www.amplifyyourvoice.org/jamaica

or Jaevion Nelson, jaevion@j-yan.org