Vocational skills & Economic strengthening.

Youth advocates' vocational skills and economic strengthening programs are comprehensive initiatives designed to break cycles of poverty and unemployment by equipping young people, often from marginalized communities, with both market-relevant skills and the tools to achieve financial autonomy. These programs typically involve a two-pronged approach: first, providing hands-on vocational training in high-demand fields such as digital literacy, construction, tailoring, or agribusiness, which is often coupled with essential soft skills like communication and work ethic. Second, they focus on economic strengthening by offering education in financial literacy—including budgeting, saving, and debt management—and facilitating access to resources like seed funding, mentorship, and linkages to internship or job placement opportunities. The overarching goal, championed by the youth advocates who design and often deliver these programs, is not merely job placement but fostering sustainable livelihoods, entrepreneurial mindsets, and the economic resilience that allows participants to build stable futures and contribute to the economic vitality of their communities.

Step Up 4 Adolescents SRH Access

The "Step Up 4 Adolescents SRHR Access" program is a targeted advocacy and implementation initiative focused on dramatically improving Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) for adolescents, a group often facing significant barriers to vital information and services. Youth advocates are central to its methodology, working to dismantle stigma, influence policy, and create adolescent-friendly health environments. Youth Advocates' work is multifaceted: they directly engage with peers through comprehensive sexuality education workshops that go beyond biology to cover consent, healthy relationships, and bodily autonomy; they advocate for legal and policy reforms to lower age restrictions for services and increase budget allocations for adolescent health; and they collaborate with healthcare providers to train them in non-judgmental, confidential service delivery. Crucially, the program emphasizes access by establishing or strengthening youth-friendly clinics, creating discreet referral pathways, and leveraging digital tools for information dissemination and telemedicine, all while ensuring interventions are inclusive of marginalized groups such as the Key population youth and those in humanitarian settings. Ultimately, the program, powered by youth advocates, aims to empower adolescents with the knowledge, agency, and accessible services necessary to make informed decisions about their bodies, health, and futures.

Every Hour Matters Campaign

Every Hour Matters Campaign provides a concrete example of localized, youth-led action. In Zimbabwe, YAZ implements the campaign by directly confronting the cultural and systemic barriers that delay survivors of sexual violence from accessing critical post-rape care. Their work is multi-pronged and grounded in community engagement: they conduct intensive peer education and awareness workshops in schools, universities, and local communities to disseminate crucial information about the 72-hour window for emergency contraception and PEP (Post-Exposure Prophylaxis for HIV), using culturally relevant materials and dialogue to break the silence and stigma surrounding sexual assault. Simultaneously, they engage in strategic advocacy by mapping and assessing health facilities to identify and publicize youth-friendly service points, and they train healthcare providers on adolescent-sensitive, non-judgmental care to improve the quality of services. YAZ also leverages digital and traditional media to amplify the "Every Hour Matters" message nationwide, ensuring that vital information on where to seek help is accessible. Crucially, they advocate for policy implementation, pushing for the full operationalization of national guidelines on the management of sexual violence to ensure services are free, confidential, and available without parental consent for adolescents, thereby empowering young survivors with knowledge and advocating for a system that supports their right to timely and compassionate care.

Building bridges through positive norms to address violence against children

Building bridges through positive norms to address violence against children is a transformative, community-centered approach that moves beyond punitive measures to fundamentally reshape the social and cultural environment in which children live. This strategy, often championed by youth advocates and child rights organizations, involves identifying and mobilizing existing protective community values—such as collective responsibility, respect for children, and non-violent conflict resolution—and intentionally strengthening them to displace harmful norms that tacitly accept or perpetuate violence. The work is deeply participatory: facilitators engage community leaders, parents, teachers, and children themselves in reflective dialogues to critically examine harmful practices like corporal punishment, child marriage, or gender-based violence, and to collectively redefine positive standards of behavior. This process "builds bridges" by fostering intergenerational understanding, creating new social contracts for child protection, and empowering communities to become their own agents of sustainable change. By shifting the focus from reacting to incidents to proactively cultivating a protective, nurturing ecosystem of positive norms, this approach seeks to prevent violence at its roots, ensuring children's safety, dignity, and healthy development are upheld as a shared, non-negotiable community value.

Break the Outbreak

The Break the Outbreak program is a dynamic, youth-led public health initiative where young advocates are mobilized as critical frontline communicators and community mobilizers to combat infectious disease outbreaks, such as COVID-19, cholera, or Ebola. Recognizing that traditional top-down messaging often fails to reach or resonate with all communities, especially youth, this program trains and deploys young people to "break" the chain of transmission by bridging critical information gaps. Their work is multi-faceted: they translate complex public health guidelines into accessible, culturally relevant, and peer-to-peer messaging distributed via social media, radio dramas, and grassroots outreach; they actively debunk rampant misinformation and disinformation by providing credible, science-based facts; and they address specific barriers to prevention, such as facilitating access to hygiene supplies or vaccination sites in underserved areas. By leveraging their trusted positions within their social networks and communities, youth advocates in this program do not just disseminate information—they model preventative behaviors, foster community accountability, and turn their generation into a powerful force for collective action, effectively making them essential partners in containing outbreaks and saving lives.

Gold Youth Peer Education Programme

Gold Peer Education is based on the reality that many people make changes not only based on what they know, but on the opinions and actions of their trusted peers. Peer Educators can communicate and understand in a way that adults can’t, and they can serve as role models for change.
The gold Model is delivered through two modes of delivery which allow for a deep and wide ecosystem of gold Model replicators and implementation partners.
These partners are made up of a combination of grassroots youth organizations and government systemic partners. They are part of a gold community of practice and collaborate with gold-youth and each other in a common vision to see an Africa where young people from across the continent know the gold that is inside of them and live this out with purpose.
gold-youth serves the ecosystem through provision of varied levels of capacity building, quality assurance and co-financing.

DREAMS Program

The DREAMS Program (Determined, Resilient, Empowered, AIDS-free, Mentored, and Safe) is a major global partnership, notably funded by PEPFAR, with youth advocacy woven into its core as both a methodology and an outcome. While not exclusively run by youth advocates, its most effective implementations deeply integrate them as essential agents of change to reduce HIV incidence among adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) in high-burden countries. Youth advocates within DREAMS work to create a protective environment by addressing the root causes of vulnerability. Their roles are multifaceted: they serve as peer mentors and educators, delivering crucial information on HIV prevention, sexual health, and rights in safe, girl-only spaces; they champion economic strengthening by facilitating access to financial literacy training, savings clubs, and vocational skills; and they lead community mobilization efforts to shift harmful gender norms and reduce stigma. Crucially, they advocate for structural interventions, such as keeping girls in school and combating gender-based violence, by engaging with traditional leaders, parents, and policymakers. In essence, youth advocates in DREAMS are not just recipients of services but are empowered to co-design and drive the very interventions that build resilience, agency, and a safer, healthier future for themselves and their peers, embodying the program's goal of fostering a determined, resilient, and AIDS-free generation.

Safe Schools for a Healthier Population initiative

The Safe Schools for a Healthier Population Initiative is a youth advocate-led program that strategically positions schools as foundational hubs for fostering comprehensive health, safety, and well-being for both students and the wider community. Recognizing that a healthy, safe, and supportive learning environment is a critical social determinant of long-term population health, youth advocates work to transform schools into protective ecosystems. Their efforts are holistic and action-oriented: they establish peer-led clubs and committees to promote mental health awareness, prevent bullying and gender-based violence, and provide peer counseling; they advocate for and help implement comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) curricula that are age-appropriate and scientifically accurate; and they campaign for improved physical infrastructure, such as clean water, sanitation, and safe recreational spaces. Beyond the school gates, they bridge the school-community divide by engaging parents and local leaders in dialogues about child protection and positive discipline, and by organizing school-based health screenings and vaccination drives. By making schools physically and emotionally safer and more health-promoting, these youth advocates tackle issues like teen pregnancy, substance abuse, and communicable diseases at their root, thereby cultivating a generation of healthier, more informed individuals and contributing to the resilience and vitality of the entire population.

Youth Helpline Empowering Lives.

24/7 confidential support, counseling, and referrals via helpline and digital channels to keep young people safe and connected to care. The Youth Helpline Empowering Lives Project, implemented by Youth Advocates Zimbabwe (YA) in Seke District, has delivered measurable improvements in adolescent health and well-being throughout the years. With support from Egmont Trust, the project provided youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services, HIV prevention, psychosocial support, gender norms transformation, and economic empowerment opportunities. The project demonstrated resilience, adaptability, and strong performance across service delivery, mentorship, and community engagement.

Amplifying Adolescents & Key Vulnerable Pops in Community Led Monitoring

The Amplifying Adolescents & Key Vulnerable Populations in Community-Led Monitoring (CLM) Program, driven by Youth Advocates, is a transformative approach to health systems accountability that centers the experiences of the most marginalized. In this model, youth advocates are trained as expert data collectors and change agents from within their own communities—including adolescent girls and young women, key populations youth, sex workers, and people who use drugs. They systematically gather real-time, granular feedback on health services (like HIV clinics, SRH services, or mental health support) through surveys, interviews, and focus groups, focusing on critical issues like stigma, confidentiality, wait times, stockouts of medicines, and provider attitudes. This community-generated evidence is then analyzed and used not just to report problems, but to co-create solutions through structured dialogues with health facility managers, local governments, and national policymakers. By amplifying the firsthand perspectives of adolescents and key populations, youth advocates shift the power dynamic in health monitoring: they move from being passive beneficiaries to essential auditors and partners in health governance. This ensures services are not only accessible but also acceptable, equitable, and effective, ultimately strengthening the entire health system's responsiveness and quality for those who need it most.

Enhancing Access to Integrated HIV Services Amongst Adolescents and Young People through m-Health in Southern Africa

The "Enhancing Access to Integrated HIV Services Amongst Adolescents and Young People through m-Health in Southern Africa" program, driven by youth advocates, leverages mobile technology (m-Health) to dismantle critical barriers to HIV prevention, testing, treatment, and support for a demographic that is highly connected yet often underserved. Youth Advocates are central to its design and rollout, ensuring the digital tools are relevant, confidential, and engaging. Their work involves co-creating and promoting platforms such as anonymous SMS/chat-based counselling services, medication and clinic appointment reminders, location-based maps for youth-friendly service providers, and interactive social media campaigns that normalize HIV testing and combat stigma. By using the digital channels where young people already are, these advocates provide discreet, immediate access to accurate information, peer support networks, and direct linkages to care, effectively bridging the gap between health systems and the daily lives of adolescents. Furthermore, they use aggregated, anonymized data from these platforms to advocate for improved service delivery, highlighting gaps in real-time to health authorities. This youth-led, tech-enabled model not only increases the uptake and retention in HIV care but also empowers adolescents to take proactive, informed control of their health in a private and accessible manner, transforming mobile phones into powerful tools for public health and personal agency.

Ending Child Marriages; Transforming Futures

The "Ending Child Marriages; Transforming Futures" program led by youth advocates is a powerful, multi-faceted movement that tackles the root causes of child marriage while empowering girls to reclaim their futures. Youth advocates, often survivors or peers from affected communities, drive change through direct action and systemic advocacy. Their work includes community mobilization and dialogue, where they engage parents, traditional leaders, and religious figures in conversations to shift deep-seated norms that prioritize early marriage over education, using data and personal testimonies to highlight the harms. They establish girls' clubs and safe spaces that provide life skills, comprehensive sexuality education, and mentorship, building girls' agency, self-esteem, and knowledge of their rights. Concurrently, they spearhead legal and policy advocacy, campaigning for the enforcement of laws that set the legal age of marriage at 18 and creating community-based surveillance systems to report violations. Crucially, they address the economic drivers by advocating for and facilitating access to scholarships, vocational training, and savings programs for girls, offering tangible alternatives to marriage. By combining protection, empowerment, and community transformation, youth advocates in this program work not only to prevent child marriages but to fundamentally alter the trajectory of girls' lives, replacing lost potential with education, opportunity, and self-determination.

Ending Child Marriages; Transforming Futures (2025 cohort)

The "Ending Child Marriages; Transforming Futures (2025 Cohort)" program represents a targeted, time-bound initiative by a new generation of youth advocates who are deploying advanced, data-informed, and hyper-localized strategies to accelerate progress against child marriage. This cohort functions as a specialized force, building upon past lessons to implement a refined theory of change. Their work is characterized by deep community immersion and co-creation, where advocates, many of whom are near-peers or former child brides, partner directly with girls at risk to map the specific economic pressures, social norms, and service gaps in their districts. They leverage digital storytelling and social media campaigns to amplify the voices of survivors and shift public narrative at scale, while using mobile technology for real-time data collection on marriage threats, enabling rapid response through established networks of social workers and child protection committees.
A hallmark of the 2025 cohort is its integrated approach to economic and educational empowerment. Advocates broker partnerships with local businesses and technical institutes to create guaranteed pathway programs, linking girls' club participants directly to apprenticeships, digital skills training, and seed funding for micro-enterprises, thereby presenting families with a compelling alternative to marriage. They also engage in strategic advocacy with traditional and religious leaders, not just through dialogue but by facilitating "positive deviant" ceremonies that publicly celebrate girls' educational milestones, thereby reshaping community rites of passage. By focusing on systemic levers—economic alternatives, community-led protection, and narrative change—the 2025 cohort aims not only to prevent marriages but to engineer a sustainable ecosystem where every girl's future is defined by her agency, education, and potential, not by a forced union.

Ending Child Marriages; Transforming Futures (community partnerships)

The "Ending Child Marriages; Transforming Futures (Community Partnerships)" program, led by Youth Advocates, strategically positions deep, authentic collaboration with local power structures as the core engine for sustainable change. Recognizing that top-down interventions often fail, Youth Advocates in this initiative act as critical bridges and facilitators, forging alliances with a diverse coalition of community actors including local government councils, traditional leaders (chiefs and religious figures), parent-teacher associations, women's savings groups, and local NGOs. Their role is to align these partners around a shared goal: making the community itself the primary protector of its girls. This involves co-designing and implementing community-based surveillance systems where village volunteers, trained by advocates, identify and support at-risk girls; facilitating multi-stakeholder dialogues that reframe child marriage from a "tradition" to a barrier to community health and economic prosperity; and supporting traditional leaders to issue local by-laws that reinforce national laws against the practice.

Crucially, Youth Advocates work to ensure these partnerships translate into tangible alternatives. They link women's savings groups to provide emergency loans for families in crisis, preventing marriage as a financial coping mechanism. They partner with local businesses and technical colleges to create visible, attractive pathways for girls into skilled employment. By embedding their activism within the fabric of trusted local institutions, Youth Advocates transform community partners from passive observers or potential resistors into active co-owners of the solution. This partnership model ensures that protective norms and economic alternatives are locally sourced and sustained, creating an environment where the commitment to end child marriage outlasts any single program or cohort of advocates.

Ending Child Marriages; Transforming Futures (digital outreach)

The "Ending Child Marriages; Transforming Futures (Digital Outreach)" program harnesses the pervasive power of digital platforms, led by tech-savvy Youth Advocates, to create a protective, informative, and mobilizing ecosystem for girls at risk and their communities. This initiative moves beyond awareness to provide actionable tools and safe spaces. Youth Advocates curate and disseminate targeted content on popular social media and messaging apps—using locally relatable memes, short dramas, and influencer partnerships—to debunk myths that justify child marriage and to normalize girls' education and autonomy. A core component is the development of confidential digital help-seeking pathways, such as encrypted chatbots or hotlines, where girls can discreetly report threats of marriage, access legal advice, and receive immediate referrals to local protection services and psychosocial support.

Furthermore, advocates leverage digital tools for community engagement and accountability, hosting live virtual dialogues with religious leaders, health workers, and policymakers to publicly address the issue. They use data visualization and mapping from their platforms to identify hotspot areas and track trends, presenting evidence to authorities to demand resource allocation. Crucially, the program creates positive digital peer networks—private online forums and mentorship groups—where girls can find solidarity, share experiences, and access online life-skills and financial literacy training. By meeting communities and girls where they increasingly are—online—this digital outreach strategy amplifies the reach of traditional methods, breaks the silence in private and public spheres, and provides a critical, real-time layer of intervention and empowerment in the fight to end child marriage