Challenge

Young people make up the bulk of Africa’s total population with an estimated 75% of the continent’s population below the age of 35, filling our continent with incredible energy and potential. Yet throughout Africa, young people are facing phenomenal challenges and life-threatening risks, often disproportionately carried by girls and young women. These risks are easier to recognize, are typically pressing and often arise when accessing basic rights including quality education, water, sanitation, healthcare, and decent work. Additionally, young people also suffer the effects of violence and bear the dualistic impacts of slow onsets of climate change and disasters. Furthermore, they experience intersecting forms of identities, marginalization, exclusion from decision making, and struggle with the brunt of the erosion of human rights which impede their access to justice. From a demographic point of view, this calls for a paradigm shift towards the recognition and support of the youth to harness their potential by building capacity for quality education and skills improvement, health and well-being and livelihoods, good governance, affordable healthcare, accountability, decent employment opportunities, leadership skills, empowerment and social entrepreneurship. This fuels the energy and passion within The Youth Cafe to make a difference. Through our expertise, international network of partners, and youth-led approaches toward achieving sustainable development, social equity, innovative solutions, community resilience, and transformative change, we have worked to address questions such as how can our interventions or programmes actually lead to lasting changes? What type of evidence indicates progress? Which strategies are most effective to help a majority of youth unlock their potential?

Story

The Youth Cafe’s (TYC) journey started on the 2nd September 2012 when the youth representatives in the United Nations High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 outreach consultations, established a Multidisciplinary group to provide guidance to the work of The Youth Café. Comprising 12 talented young emerging leaders from the ﬁelds of politics, academia, civil society, ﬁnance, and the media and all international and regional youth groups. This partnership was a unique, pioneering collaboration in the ﬁeld of international development. The group was tasked with exploring the roots of youth deprivation and vulnerability, and recommending concrete action plans to address them. To do so, it met ﬁve times between November 2012 and November 2013 virtually and face to face meetings in London, Monrovia, Bali and at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

The Multidisciplinary Youth Group’s report, published on 13th November 2013, put forth recommendations that became the guiding principles in the implementation of The Youth Café. In particular, it identiﬁed eleven priority areas of action for The Youth Café, which all play a critical role in strengthening meaningful inclusion for youth, and to which The Youth Café should bring a multidisciplinary and multi-perspective approach: Youth Population Trends and Sustainable Development; Youth and Comprehensive Sexuality Education; Youth and ICT; Fostering Dialogue and Mutual Understanding; Youth and Smart Investment, Youth Participation in Decision Making; Youth and Hunger; Culture and Youth Development; Youth and Armed Conﬂict, and Youth with Disabilities.

This laid the background for The Youth Café as a not-for-proﬁt youth organization to formally be incorporated in Kenya as a company, with all its ﬁnances going directly to its youth empowerment programs. It was initially registered with a narrow remit on 7th October, 2014 then transitioned to a full fledged company on the 4th of January, 2018 to accommodate it's expanding operations and activities. In the year 2020, The Youth Café made a milestone to become duly Equivalency Determination Certified by the San Francisco based NGO Source. An ED certificate for The Youth Café is available in the NGO Source repository and immediately available to member grant makers upon request.

The basis for the prioritization of youth development by The Youth Café’s secretariat and board of directors is rooted in Our strategy which looks at today's youth bulge as an opportunity for development and economic growth. This is why we are the leading organization in realizing sizable, lasting, and positive change in the lives of young people in Africa. The Youth Café defines “youth” as those aged between 15-35 years without prejudice to other definitions.

We believe in youthful audacity, the power to dream big and execute those dreams is essential in tackling the daunting challenges Africa faces today. The real returns will come if we can multiply this talent for innovation by the whole of Africa’s growing youth population. This depends on whether Africa’s young people — all of Africa’s young people — are given the opportunity to thrive.

Much has changed since The Youth Café was founded nearly a decade ago. Bolstered by grassroots knowledge, The Youth Café is dedicated to reducing youth deprivation and socio-economic empowerment resulting in transformative change. Today, we are actively working on a number of cross-cutting issues, partnering with hundreds of organizations. These partnerships span the private sector, government institutions, civic society, development partners, and academia and are responsible for delivering programs, bringing other partners on board, innovating & providing solutions for implementation challenges. This has enabled us to bridge the gap between different generations by bringing together government leaders & policy influencers implementing youth policies to share knowledge & ideas that can assist others in achieving their own goals for their youth aligned with existing national, regional, and international frameworks and the SDGs. Furthermore, we identify existing programs aligned with The Youth Cafe goals and facilitate a platform to work together to achieve our common goals. These programs also assist in measuring, monitoring & maintaining successful initiatives aligned with The Youth Cafe objectives.

The Youth Cafe operations are powered by its mission and vision which is to enrich the lives of young people by modelling and advancing youth-led and rights-based approaches for fostering young people’s civic efficacy, community resilience, sustainable development, and equitable society, as well as proposing innovative solutions, driving social progress, and inspiring transformative change by utilizing innovative research, policy, and advocacy actions.

At The Youth Cafe, we have worked to develop a Theory of Change, a roadmap that depicts and reflects young people’s views of how change occurs. Additionally, we have documented our principles that call upon organizations to recognize and invest in an inclusive manner and specifically in the opportunities of youth-recognizing the unique challenges they face and ensuring that no young person is left behind. These youth-led Principles constitute the voices of young people gathered during The Youth Café virtual consultations. In cooperation with international partners, these consultations focus on the prospects of young people in Africa.

While active on a number of cross-cutting issues, The Youth Café carries out eight catalytic, action-driven, and progressive activities to which it brings a multidisciplinary and multi-perspective approach for the sake of helping young citizens. These are: 1)Culture, Arts and Sports; 2) Governance and Political Inclusion: Accountability; 3) Governance and Political Inclusion: Remittances; 4) Peace and Security 5) Education and Vocational Skills; 6) Business, Job Creation and Entrepreneurship; 7) Universal Health Coverage; and 8) Environmental Preservation and Climate Change.These Eight Pillars of The Youth Café provide an essential organizing structure for the development and implementation of its various programs and initiatives, which all play a critical role in reducing youth deprivation and socio-economic empowerment of young people in the continent.

To date, The Youth Cafe has a digital reach in some 52 countries and has reached over 2.2 million young men and women with its projects and mobilised more than $10 million in support of youth empowerment in Africa through the support of partners. It also reaches over 1.200,000 young people online monthly and more than 147,000 member subscribers. Our Strategic Plan has outlined a clear roadmap of tackling the many issues facing youth through partnering with young people, leveraging research, learning and adaptation; cultivating sustainability and self resilience; and advancing gender responsive programming. We believe in inclusion and diversity and work with marginalised sections of youth such as youth living with disabilities, youth living in informal settlements, young women and girls, minority youth, indigenous youth, among others. As a leading organization for implementing positive youth development programs.

In conclusion, The Youth Cafe prides itself in cultivating home-grown solutions that are primed to provide relevant solutions for Africa and to support the implementation of relevant initiatives that empower youth. The Youth Cafe operates as a pan-African platform connecting African youth for socio-economic transformation. Overall, we hope to contribute to the achievement of Africa’s SDGs mandate through evidence-based local, national, and regional initiatives.