Engage young people as partners

• Young people should not be seen merely as recipients of services but as partners in the design and delivery of programmes. This can include roles such as Job Search Club facilitators, EIIP site monitors, and members of programme steering committees.

Develop structures for youth input

• Create formal structures that allow young people to feed into programme design and implementation. Examples include a Youth Workstream at the global level and a Youth Network Committee (YNC) at the country level.

Adapt training and capacity building

• Offer training programmes to equip young people with the knowledge and skills they need to participate effectively and lead change in their communities. The ILO, UNHCR and UNICEF put together and launched a Youth Leadership Academy to build the capacities of Youth Network Committee members in Ethiopia to carry out their role as advisers effectively and guide the implementation of programming. The Academy covered such topics as gender and disability inclusion, rights at work and meaningful youth engagement, while also focusing on strengthening members’ soft skills, such as communication, leadership and teamwork.
• The Work Wise Youth: A Guide to Youth Rights at Work updated and expanded on the 2015 manual Rights @ Work 4 Youth: Decent Jobs for Young People. The guide shed light on young people’s rights at work, including regarding wages, working time, occupational safety and health, prevention of violence and harassment in the world of work, gender equality and non-discrimination, and access to social security. The consultative process that informed the development of the guide involved dialogue with more than 70 stakeholders, including youth representatives and young refugee advocates.

Promote collaboration among agencies

• Joint interventions and events that bring together the expertise and resources of different agencies can amplify impact. For example, the Youth Leadership Academy was a joint initiative of the ILO, UNHCR and UNICEF. 

Amplify young people’s voices

• Amplify young people’s voices through local, national, regional, and global policy advocacy. This can be done through participation in global forums. Working together with the Government of the Netherlands, UNICEF and UNHCR, the PROSPECTS team used key global forums like the ECOSOC Youth Forum, Global Refugee Forum and the Summit of the Future to advocate for more investments in education, training and decent jobs for forcibly displaced youth, and greater funding for and partnerships with refugee youth-led organizations (RYLOs). This included partnership with RYLOs such as the Global Refugee Youth Network.