Root Change is delighted to announce that we have been selected to be a part of the Our Knowledge, Leading Change consortium with IREX to implement YouthPower Youth Excel, a global five-year U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) program to strengthen youth leadership in local development. This program will empower young people and youth organizations to drive local development by using implementation research to strengthen local, national, and global development solutions.
Youth Excel will support young leaders and youth-led and youth-serving organizations around the globe to conduct quality implementation research—a type of research that focuses on collecting data during a program to improve the program in real time. This research will not only improve youth programs but also generate dialogue between young people and adult decision-makers so that youth and adults can together shape better policies, programs, and development agendas.
With our consortium partners, we will engage youth leaders and youth organizations across our networks and learn what research approaches are most effective, how to best engage adults in intergenerational dialogue, how to leverage youth networks for more impact, and which collaborative inquiry approaches create real systems and policy change.
Root Change is particularly excited for the opportunity to collaborate with and learn from an exciting cohort to expand on our past work with Social Labs, Collective Impact, and Pando LLS. With our partners, we will be adapting these approaches to provide a safe space for inclusive intergenerational dialogue, to build youth networking skills, and to foster greater trust between local youth-led and youth serving organizations and adult decision-makers.
To learn more about this program and our partners please click here.
We’re thrilled by the opportunity to build out new ways to engage youth in development and will keep you updated as the program progresses.
For more information about Youth Excel, please contact excelyouth@irex.org.