The Youth Café Receives The WIN WIN Gothenburg Sustainability Youth Award 2021.

The WIN WIN Gothenburg Sustainability Award is a non-profit organization financed by the City of Gothenburg, Region Västra Götaland and several member organizations and companies. It is the world’s largest sustainability award that aims to recognize and support outstanding contributions from around the world. The goal of the award is to stimulate creativity and achieve lasting synergies as it strives to strike the right balance between ecological, environmental, and social needs. The prize has been presented in Gothenburg since 2000. The WIN WIN Youth Award is an international award that aims to empower and reward young people who play an active role in the creation of a more sustainable future.

The Youth Café was last year extremely humbled and honored to be chosen as one of the five finalists for 2021’s WIN WIN Gothenburg Sustainability Award.

The theme for the 2021 WIN WIN sustainability award was anti-corruption, and The Youth Café was nominated as one of the top five finalists out of a pool of over 220 nominees from 52 countries around the world for our work under the thematic area of Governance and Political Inclusion as highlighted in our Theory of Change.

Through our Theory of Change, the organization identifies Governance and Political Inclusion as one of our eight thematic areas. Under this thematic area, The Youth Café has implemented various award winning initiatives that emphasize accountability and transparency to uphold a strong democracy.

Our strategic goals under governance and political inclusion hopes to provide at least 100,000 young men and women with an enabling environment for active participation and meaningful engagement, and support the exercising of their civic rights and responsibilities in the society. It achieved this through the exercise of principles which recognize the partnership with young people as leaders and experts at all stages of policymaking, including the follow up and review of policy implementation to ensure accountability.

One of our projects in this area was titled “Engaging youths in the fight against corruption and the closing civic spaces in Kenya”. The Youth Café redefined the role of youths in improving the democratic processes in Kenya. Through a photo/video competition, the project utilized different digital media platforms to engage young people and amplify their voices regarding governance, thus generating ideas to address inefficiencies in governance initiatives. The contest reached over 500,000 young people and attracted hundreds of entries.

The media contest continues to prove that young people are heavily invested in socio-political development. Under the project, The Youth Café also built the capacity of Kenyan youth in independent media journalism with a focus on accountability in public finance and participatory governance processes.

This motivated young people from different parts of Kenya to submit their realities and opinions on political corruption. The Youth Café also created an independent platform that reached over 200,000 readers in a month and published cutting edge evidence-based and youth researched articles, policy briefs and reports on political and governance issues.

The Youth Café believes that corruption stifles sustainable development by increasing incoming inequalities and curtailing equitable distribution of opportunities and resources. Since corruption can take many forms, it manifests in different sectors of an economy affecting individual domains such as public health, sports and entrepreneurship. It erodes public trust and is a threat to democracy and stability. As such, this project aimed to create a sustainable community where young people could support each other to uphold integrity.

As one of the top 20 nominees, The Youth Café had the opportunity to participate in the WIN WIN Sustainability Adventure 2021. The two day virtual event was held on the 2nd and 9th of October. It allowed representatives from The Youth Café to connect with changemakers in a global community of youth active citizens, learn how to create sustainability solution stories, expand communication skills, learn from others’ ideas and perspectives, and gain visibility at the WIN WIN Youth Arena that happened at the WIN WIN Award Ceremony.

The theme for the 2021 WIN WIN Gothenburg Sustainability Award resonated strongly with The Youth Cafés credence that the work against corruption is a necessary condition for global sustainable development. This is why we are so honored by this recognition and hope to continue striving for a youth-led, sustainable, equitable and corruption free future.

The Youth Café works with young men and women around Africa as a trailblazer in advancing youth-led approaches toward achieving sustainable development, social equity, innovative solutions, community resilience, and transformative change.

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