Youth Engagement

We recognise and actively promote youth engagement in processes for the SDGs.

Partner with Us

Are you an organisation focused on youth engagement or are you working on engaging youth with your current work and/or processes? We would love to hear about how to partner with you to make youth engagement as valuable and integrated as possible. Reach out to us via the contact page and we will come back to you asap!

Youth Engagement

At 4SD Foundation, we value diversity of thought and experience, with a particular emphasis on youth engagement. Recognising the importance of youth engagement in processes for the SDGs is emphasised in the UN Secretary General ́s report on Youth, Peace, and Security, published in March 2020. The report highlights two key findings:

The first is the growing recognition of young people’s essential role in peace and security with many instances in which Governments, United Nations entities, civil society actors and others are stepping up to meet the requirements of resolution 2250 (2015) which formalized the youth, peace and security (YPS) Agenda.
The second is that core challenges remain, including structural barriers limiting the participation of young people and their capacity to influence decision-making; violations of their human rights; and insufficient investment in facilitating their inclusion, in particular through education.

A snapshot of our youth engagement efforts:

Food Systems Summit Dialogues

In the lead up to the UN 2021 Food Systems Summit, we worked closely with the Food Systems Summit Secretariat to engage youth as part of the Food Systems Summit Dialogues process.

Events included the “Appetiser for Summit Dialogues” on 16 October 2020 featuring Sandrine Gouvêa, Latin America Youth Focal Point for the UN Major Group on Children and Youth in support of the Food Systems Summit, a specific Independent Convenor training session for UN Youth Groups on 16 March 2021, co-facilitated by David Nabarro and Jolly Dusabe, Youth Engagement Lead for the Summit, as well as a Global Youth Dialogue convened by the UN Food Systems Summit Special Envoy Dr Agnes Kalibata and UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta H. Fore.

The inclusion of youth in the Independent Dialogues processes can be explored in the deep dive report by Blue Marble Evaluation here. Further analysis of youth engagement in the Dialogues can be done using the Summit Dialogues Gateway Explore Feedback function, featuring over 1,000 Official Feedback Forms submitted to the Summit.

One Young World

During the pandemic, we collaborated with One Young World to inspire greater systems leadership amongst youth during the COVID-19 pandemic. This included the participation of One Young World Ambassadors at the COVID-19 Open Online Briefings followed by “reflection” write-ups by the young leaders.

Dr Surbhi Shrivastava, a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes (CEHAT), a non-profit organisation in Mumbai, India. Read A Health and Social Issue: Two Sides of the COVID Coin.
Sehaj Sharma, a One Young World Ambassador active in the space of healthcare technology and Artificial Intelligence. Read Optimism, Inequalities, and Hope in the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Dr Carlos Madrigal- Iberri, a Medical Doctor & One Young World ambassador who is deeply committed to Global Health. He serves on the Board of Salvando Latidos a non-profit organization, which provides free medical care to low income populations; during this pandemic, they are fundraising to provide protective personnel equipment for hospitals facing COVID-19 in Mexico. Read The challenge of learning to live with COVID-19 from a Public Health Perspective and in Spanish El reto de aprender a vivir con COVID-19 desde una perspectiva de Salud Pública.
Lucky Aziken is an Optometrist working to provide sustainable access to quality and affordable eye care services in neglected communities in Nigeria. He is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Vision Care Givers International, a frontline Non-profit working in eye health, health education and community development. Read The 3-P’s of a COVID-Ready World.
Abdul Samed Zurak, Chairman of the Board of Zurak Cancer Foundation; a non-governmental organization working on improving access to oncology healthcare service at the primary point of healthcare in the slum, rural and hard to reach communities in Ghana. Read RISKS AND VITAL STEPS TOWARDS COVID READINESS IN GHANA.

In addition, our Strategic Director David Nabarro participated in the #TogetherApart series and spoke to Aya Chebbi from Tunisia, the African Union Envoy on Youth.

One Young World (OYW) is the global forum for young leaders. OYW identifies, promotes and connects the world’s most impactful young leaders to create a better world, with more responsible, more effective leadership. The annual OYW Summit convenes the brightest young talent from every country and sector, working to accelerate social impact.

Learn more about OYW at https://www.oneyoungworld.com/

Multipod Mentoring

During the first year of the pandemic, we developed the COVID-Ready video clips in an effort to sensitise people to the systemic challenges and complex nature of the pandemic. In support of this work, we built a multilingual collaboration with MultiPOD Mentoring to help reach more people, by adding subtitles in multiple languages to the video clips.

Being COVID-Ready

Chinese: Charli S Zhang
Portuguese: Ricardo Mexia
Turkish: Sadime B Kisi & Claudia Batz
Serbian: Jovana Ilkic & Miljana Jovanovic
Burmese: Ei Ei Aung
Nepali: Dhiraj Gurung
Slovenian: Ana-Marija Meglic
Russian: Anna Tokar & Neli Tsereteli
Ukranian: Anna Tokar & Neli Tsereteli

COVID-Ready – Regardless of Resources

Slovenian: Ana-Marija Meglic
German: Ines Boehret
Spanish: Mariana Rodriguez
Croatian: Miljana Jovanovic, Lana Augustincic and Jovana Ilkic.
Serbian: Miljana Jovanovic, Lana Augustincic and Jovana Ilkic.
Portuguese: Ricardo Mexia
Turkish: Claudia Batz
Japanese: Haruko Yokote
Norwegian: Silje Rene
Danish: Nina Rise
Nepali: Dhiraj Gurung
Chinese: Charli S. Zhang
Greek: Christos Tsagkaris
Finnish: Irene Blomqvist and Awa Ahmed

COVID-19 and Systemic Inequality

MultiPOD Mentoring is a free, virtual program that focuses on the needs of our Mentees (students and young professionals). It is a long-distance, multi-country, and free-of-charge mentoring program directed to students and young professionals (mentees) from any country and academic or professional background, who are studying or working in the fields of global health, human development, and environmental protection.

Learn more at https://www.multipodmentoring.org.

COVID-19 Open Online Briefing Schools Session

On 27 October 2020, a special session during Series 2 of the COVID-19 Open Online Briefings was dedicated to students and families – addressing the hopes and fears they may have in relation to COVID-19.

This session was organised in partnership with the International School of Kenya and was kindly moderated by one of the students, Zara Bredin. We were also joined by special guest panelist, Clare French, headteacher of a primary school in Essex, United Kingdom.

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