Latest News And Updates
Please join The Youth Café, USAID, IREX, and the other Youth Excel consortium for Youth Excel’s Global Launch event! Join a set of dynamic activities and speakers to discuss a shared question:
“How might we, as the global youth development community, leverage youth-led research and learning so that international development works better for young people, their communities, and the world?”
Through our collaboration with #LearningPlanet, we hope to facilitate exchanges between both organizations to share best practices, methodologies, and innovative pedagogy, in order to help each other thrive and positively impact society, enhance youth employability through career and skill development programs, design and maintain an online information platform for students, enable virtual exchange and capacity building of students, teachers, networks and schools, and foster network development among various stakeholders such as students, experts, institutions etc.
Dear Secretary Blinken and Acting Administrator Steele,
The Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP), the leading nonpartisan global network to end violent conflict and build sustainable peace, on behalf of its 130+ members working in 181 countries and The Youth Cafe undersigned organizations, urges the Department of State and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to ensure conflict prevention and peacebuilding programs are robustly funded and integrated in the U.S. government’s COVID-19 strategy and supplemental funding from the American Rescue Plan.
The Youth Café is determined to look at TVET institutions as what they are: excellent institutions for skills building in line of different careers. However, for this to happen collectively, the Ministry of Education requires to adopt a vigorous communication scheme that highlights the benefits of these institutions, their competitive edge and the success stories necessary to influence the thinking of students as well as parents. The goals to achieve social equity and present all students with good options for training could be elevated by the resourcefulness and strength of all tertiary institutions. Strengthening TVET institutions is a matter of national growth and a closer inch towards sustainable education.
Youth Excel aims to advance gender equality by using research, learning, and data to change systems and transform norms, shifting power differentials so that diverse youth—including youth of all genders in different age categories—influence development agendas and development decision making. In late 2020, we conducted a Global GESI Analysis through desk research to (1) compile data and identify broad trends in line with Youth Excel’s work; (2) provide recommendations for Youth Excel activities.
The annual Youth Forum of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) will celebrate its 10th Anniversary on 7-8 April 2021. The Forum is being organized at a time when the world is witnessing an unprecedented global emergency with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The Youth Forum will address the theme1 of ECOSOC and the 2021 UN High-level Political Forum (HLPF) focusing primarily on COVID-19 and its impact on the implementation of the Decade of Action for Sustainable Development and the kind of recovery that can put us back on track to build a better world as envisioned in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The Youth Cafe is part of the IREX led consortium implementing Youth Excel, which is a 5-year USAID-funded program. The Youth Excel will support young leaders and youth-led and youth-serving organizations around the globe to conduct quality implementation research; use data and learnings to improve their own cross-sectoral, positive youth development programs; synthesize data and learning; and engage in intergenerational dialogue with adult decision-makers so that together youth and adults can shape and advance data-informed development policies, agendas, and programs.
The Youth Café recently won a position to co-chair the Knowledge mobilization sector of this coalition as solutions for sustainable peace are generated. Knowledge mobilization will include a lot of data collection and report writing necessary to gear attention of key stakeholders. We are excited about the possibilities of this coalition in implementing the global peace agenda and in sharing information and decision making with the US Congress. It is imperative that donors, policy makers, institutions of higher learning and youth leaders come together to drive the global peace agenda forward.
Despite having strong research and accountability measures for government promises, the civil society is also prominent for various multi-million dollar grant-based projects that are community-oriented. There is a tendency for many civil institutions to work with volunteers who often bring vast resources, information or skills necessary for the achievement and development of many community projects. The unitary aspect that makes many civil societies excellent in what they do is the scope-centered approach that leads to identification of a specific thematic area or target group for action. The same way that The Youth café has identified youths as the organization’s core, there are other organizations that have specified their operation base in the same way. With the help of initiatives like Generation Equity Forum, many organizations are working towards specific sustainable development goals that unite them. Working with regional institutions has become easier and definitely, more sustainable.
The Youth Café was honoured to have the director, Willice Onyango as a recognized and awarded youth leader in the country. The Youth Café is proud to be a youth-led and youth-serving organization that has embraced the strength and resourcefulness of young people. The dimensions of exclusion that The Youth Café addresses are economic, social, political and cultural. The Youth Café has an active and popular admission of interns and volunteers to its programs which builds the capacity of young people in different skill sets. We have worked with over 2000 interns who come from different countries as well as cultural and religious backgrounds. Our plan to work with interns and volunteers is a strategic decision that is designed to involve as many qualified youths as possible in development decisions.
