A Youth Participation Best Practice Toolkit

This toolkit, developed by Save the Children, focuses on social and civic empowerment because numerous other manuals are available that cover economic empowerment. Having received less attention than economic empowerment, social and civic empowerment is crucial if youth are to develop the values, skills, knowledge and behaviours to change and manage their lives in positive, lasting ways and to influence decisions regarding their own lives. The best practices described in this toolkit are derived from focus group discussions and interviews with children, youth, parents, employers, staff, local leaders, teachers and other community members along with observations of youth group activities in Bangladesh in February and March 2014. Bangladeshi EYE programme partners validated these best practices during a workshop following the research.

Inspiration was also drawn from existing Save the Children guidelines on participation, the handbook From child labour to children in charge: A handbook on child-led organisation and advocacy on on a project of the same name that was carried out by Save the Children Sweden-Denmark in Bangladesh and partner organisations from 2005 to 2009.

Toolkit structure

• The toolkit is divided into two parts. Part one describes what organisations and facilitators should consider when designing youth participation programmes and projects aiming at the social and civic empowerment of vulnerable youth.
• Part two contains tools, methods, tips, exercises and suggested training workshops, generally mirroring Part one in terms of key headings.