Envisioning Human Mobility for 2050!

The Youth Cafe has partnered with the Open Think Tank Network on this policy project called “The Future for Human Mobility”. The Open Think Tank Network members - Agora (UK), Foraus (CH), Polis180 (DE), and Ponto (AT) - plan to experiment with a participatory foresight methodology to create explorative future scenarios on how people move across the world by 2050. Whether you are professionally involved with the topic of migration, or you are an individual looking to increase your expertise of the subject, you are warmly invited to participate in our upcoming workshops. These have been designed to challenge long-held assumptions about migration through creatively immersing ourselves in the experiences of five fictitious personas. The objective of this participatory workshop series is to bring together diverse perspectives on the future of migration to generate innovative policy recommendations that help organisations and policy makers to become more agile and able to adapt in a proactive rather than a reactive way.

THE YOUTH CAFE’S THEORY OF CHANGE

Lately, we have been working to develop and refine our Theory of Change as part of organizational Performance Improvement within Youth Excel, a 5-year  USAID’s global flagship youth development program centered on Implementation Research. Our intended outcome is to build a practical theory to underpin our ambitious youth-led community transformation efforts.  This Theory of Change is based on organizational performance improvement as an approach to building the capacity of The Youth Cafe and zeros in on achieving our strategies.

We recognize that high performing youth-led and youth-serving organizations like we desire to be, need to be exceptional in four domains identified by our  Performance Improvement framework: Efficiency, Effectiveness, Relevancy, and Journey to Self-Reliance (J2SR).

In this theory of change, we  use techniques that  match our tolerance for "planning" vs "doing." We have worked to develop a Theory of Change, a visual diagram that depicts relationships between The Youth Cafe’s inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts.  These impacts include both short- and longer-term outcomes and also reflect changes at different levels, such as individuals, organizations, systems, and communities. We have incorporated the views of young people, youth-led and youth-serving organizations, and experts so that our map reflects young people’s view of how change occurs.   

Additionally, we have documented the assumptions and risks on which we have based our change effort.

COVID RECOVERY: SCOPING AN INTERVENTION IN YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT IN KENYA

The Youth Cafe and University of Sussex (UK) through Sussex Writes are the winners of Global Challenge Fund for a joint project that will formulate a contextually-appropriate psychosocial intervention model, aiming to improve youth mental health, promote social inclusion and strengthen post-pandemic resilience in Kenya. With mental health disorders left untreated, these conditions have serious detrimental effects on young people’s developmental progress, family life and educational achievement, with long-term risks for poor health, social marginalisation and unemployment in adulthood. COVID-19 has increased threats to mental ill health and worsened pre-existing global inequalities in access to adequate care. Addressing these challenges is essential to achieving post-COVID recovery, given the close links between youth mental health, social disability and economic development. We are looking for individuals and organisations active in the area of education, child/youth welfare and experience, or healthcare, so that we might partner with them. If this is you, write to us with a description of your motivation, interests and relevant experiences.

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