The Youth CafE: A Decade of Impact and Innovation in African Youth Development.

The Youth Cafe(TYC) is one of Africa’s largest convening communities of young professionals, harnessing youth’s participation and expertise in advocacy, policy and research for social impact. TYC engages over 3,500 member organizations, 1,200 subject matter experts, and over 947,000 individuals aged 18-35 virtually from different countries in Africa. On a monthly basis, over 260,000 digital touchpoints are organized. Its broad membership enables TYC to become an incubator and trusted center of excellence for best practices, tools, and standards for youth development. For over a decade, TYC has implemented more than 45 projects through service contracts, consultancies and grants. It has utilized different approaches in engaging youth including Science-Policy Interface (SPI), Youth Advocacy Accelerator, Systems Acumen for Youth-led Development (SAYD), Issue-based Collaborative Networks (ICONS), and media campaigns. In the assignment, TYC will focus on youth engagement in East  Africa.

We are an organization driven by highly skilled, motivated, and passionate individuals who come from diverse backgrounds and believe that real change is possible. Our consulting arm leads in international research, consulting, program management, and is a communications services provider. We combine our passion and business professionalism to make a difference in the world. The Youth Cafe has also utilized youth-led approaches in the execution of its mandate. This approach recognizes young people as agents of change and promotes their leadership in development processes. It involves young people taking the lead in identifying community needs, designing programs, and implementing solutions. The approach emphasizes building the capacity and skills of young people, fostering their empowerment, and creating platforms for their active engagement in development initiatives

Through The Youth Cafe’s value addition, experience, complementary expertise, outreach and coverage, a partnership  brings uniqueness, tangible impact and, more importantly, sustainability of the capacity building on meaningful youth engagement, and overall assignment beyond the project timeline.

Furthermore, The Youth Cafe and all partners have excellent established relations with Young Parliamentarian Associations, Registrar of political parties, youth leagues, Parliamentary Committees, East African Community, AU Youth Envoy Office, East African Parliament, Political Party umbrella bodies like Center for Multiparty Democracy in Kenya, Tanzania Center for Multiparty Democracy, government entities, key government and private sector institutions, and other non-state actors, including universities, academia and research institutions, as well as with other institution donors at national, regional and continental levels. This will increase the leverage of the assignment.

Utilizing the successful and tested model of The Youth Cafe mobilizes young people and existing youth networks from different levels in Kenya to test products through its safe and inclusive youth-led platform that provides opportunities for youth to engage, empower, act, drive impact and lead policy changes, innovation and solutions in Kenya.

Innovations are essential in our work. The hybrid models of physical and virtual approaches enables us to reach more young people across the regions and ensure cost-efficiency. Online resources, applicants’ existing resources, online networking, training and meetings, online games platforms and applications promotes easy access and foster greater interest among young people to learn, participate and contribute to the assignment objectives.

The Youth Engagement Nexus (YEN) model is another innovative approach, developed by The Youth Cafe, based on its methodology, best practices, and connections. YEN  connects innovations by each activity to create a dynamic and effective model for youth participation, offering a unique and integrated approach for its impact and effectiveness.

Rooted in Rights Based Approach, TYC’s  Governance and Political Inclusion (Accountability) pillar have collaborated with members within our network to result in the following outputs:

Our strength lies in the unrivaled diversity of our team, comprising a group of highly talented, determined, and enthusiastic people who come from all backgrounds and think that genuine change is possible. Our solution-oriented methodology aims to establish a connection between the growth we want to see among young people from historically underprivileged communities and the investment world. We seek to forge a link between the development we strive to achieve amongst young people from previously disadvantaged communities and the Investment world. We accomplish this by seeking to evaluate our transformation mandate against both revenue targets and social impact outcomes. Through this model, we can provide our partners with measurable solutions.

The Youth Cafe’s focus is to seed real, lasting systemic change for young people in Africa, guided by rigorous evidence of impact, approach, and our values of efficiency, transparency, and respect.