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Hear from Dr. Elie Hindy, Executive Director, Adyan Foundation on how to apply a youth lens to P/CVE work.
Photo Source: ‘’PAVE Project. ‘’Dr. Elie Hindy: How to Apply a Youth Lens to P/CVE Work. 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27MKiRzIsrk.
To effectively incorporate a youth perspective, you need transformative positive youth development, which seeks to engage youth along with their families, communities, and/or governments so that youth are empowered to reach their full potential. PYD approaches build skills, assets, and competencies; foster healthy relationships; strengthen the environment; and transform systems.
Image Source: YouthPower. ‘’Promoting Positive Youth Development.’’ https://www.youthpower.org/positive-youth-development.
Positive Youth Development (PYD) is an approach to youth development that focuses on increasing youth assets and strengthening protective factors. PYD is based on the belief, founded in research and program experience, that “building the intellectual, physical, social, and emotional competence of youth is a more effective development strategy than one that focuses solely on correcting problems.”
Building positive youth development as an approach illustrates that to achieve the vision of healthy, productive and engaged youth, your P/CVE programs, practices and policies must work with youth to improve four components, namely their:
- Assets: Youth have the necessary resources, skills and competencies to achieve desired outcomes. Activities focus on skills building and sharing within individual, family, peer and community settings.
- Agency: Youth perceive and have the ability to employ their assets and aspirations to make or influence their own decisions about their lives and set their own goals, as well as to act upon those decisions in order to achieve desired outcomes.
- Contribution: Youth are engaged as a source of change for their own and for their communities’ positive development. Activities focus on creating opportunities for youth to participate, lead and express themselves and their thoughts.
- Enabling environment: Youth are surrounded by an environment that develops and supports their assets, agency, access to services, and opportunities, and strengthens their ability to avoid risks and to stay safe, secure, and be protected and live without fear of violence or retribution. Activities include building relationships and networks, fostering positive social and cultural norms, creating safe spaces and creating access to youth-friendly spaces.
In order to first engage youth within your analysis and wider P/CVE programming, it is critical to make the topic relatable to the communities you are wanting to engage with. For many young people, P/CVE work can come across as intimidating - an issue that is obscure and unfamiliar, or that invokes uncomfortable conversations. Even for young people who may be initially interested in this topic, the political or religious stigma associated with the term may constitute a major barrier to engagement. Utilizing different strategies to engage youth is also effective! For example, building youth networks; working with educational institutions and broader community initiatives; and utilizing recreational activities, such as arts or sports.
Targeting the right groups of young people is equally important for engagement. From the onset, you should make a decision regarding which groups you would like to engage with and should consider which communities you have access to, as well as the security implications of engaging with certain individuals and groups. It is essential to unpack the youth vulnerabilities and resilience factors.
Remember! Youth are not a homogenous group and should not be considered as gender-neutral. Youth comprise a significant portion of the focus population for much P/CVE programming, yet the term is often left gender-neutral in programming design, implementation and evaluation. Lack of recognition of the different experiences of male and female youth and their motivations for participation in violent extremism ultimately leaves programming lacking in its approach and impossible to evaluate. Programming design and evaluation, as well as theories of change and reporting structures must include recognition of the differences of the male and female youth experience, due to underlying socialized expectations of masculinity and femininity in their cultural context. Therefore, incorporating age-disaggregated data into your analysis is important to understanding the unique barriers and needs of youth, including breaking these needs down by gender and other identity forms.
Here are a few examples of how to specifically incorporate youth’s participation and leadership:
- Create physical and virtual spaces for youth to express their opinions and have their voices recognized to empower them to be agents of change in their communities. Youth centers, for example, create communal environments for trainings, dialogue, and educational and civic engagement activities.
- Engage youth within planning strategies and developing youth policies or programs, which lay the groundwork for all initiatives that encourage peacebuilding through youth empowerment. Ensure youth ownership and participatory leadership within all of your P/CVE activities to deter extremism and empower social inclusion.
- Offer youth leadership trainings with an emphasis on peacebuilding practices and conflict mitigation skills.
- Offer trainings and programs that teach vocational and soft skills to ensure that youth have the self-awareness and aptitudes to seek meaningful employment, in combination with job placement. Research has found that the five most important soft/life skills positively impacting outcomes in violence prevention programs are: social skills, empathy, self-control, self-concept, and higher-order thinking skills.
- Provide speaking opportunities and opportunities for youth-led media and communication initiatives. Media gives youth an opportunity to share knowledge and overcome exclusion. Experience shows that positive messaging is more effective than counter-messaging, especially through radio and online platforms that are most utilized by youth in key areas.
- Offer specific support to young women, with gender-focused programming that address the specific vulnerabilities and resilience factors of young women.
- Offer opportunities for youth civic engagement to increase their sense of self-efficacy. This could include creating youth councils as a political outlet and branch for advocacy.
- Offer financial and technical support and other resources to initiatives that are youth-led or connected to youth organizations.
- Offer opportunities to promote well-being and good mental health. Support at-risk youth to be conscious of their biases and decision-making processes, as well as to learn impulse control through cognitive behavioral therapy.
Participants at the OSCE-supported National Session of the European Youth Parliament-Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH); Sarajevo, 9 April 2018. Photo Source: OSCE. “Youth: Bosnia and Herzegovina.” 2018. https://www.osce.org/mission-to-bosnia-and-herzegovina/youth.
