The Youth Café Manifesto

Definition 

Youth/Young People, noun.: 

Youth/Young People: The Youth Café, for statistical purposes, defines ‘youth’, as those persons between the ages of 15 and 35 years, without prejudice to other definitions by other entities. The Youth Café uses the terms youth and young people interchangeable to mean age 15-35 with the understanding that other entities use different definitions.

Preamble 

The Youth Café is a not-for-profit pan-African youth-led and youth-serving organization with its headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya and a Theory of Change which serves as its Pathway For  Action, Sustainability, Results, Learning, and Adaptation.  

Since its founding in 2012, The Youth Café has been working with young men and women in Kenya and around Africa as a pioneer in advancing youth-led approaches toward achieving sustainable development, social equity, innovative solutions, community resilience, and transformative change. To date, The Youth Café has reached over 1.6 million young men and women with its projects and attracted major partners such as USAID, Ford Foundation, Google, International Challenge Fund, to mention a few. Its latest Annual impact Report is a testament to this.

While active on a number of cross-cutting issues, The Youth Café works mainly in eight priority areas to which it brings a multidisciplinary and multi-perspective approach: Peace and Security, Including Preventing Violent Extremism; Governance and Political Inclusion(Remittances and Accountability); Culture, Arts, and Sports; Education and Skills; Business, Job Creation and Entrepreneurship; Universal Health Coverage; Environmental Preservation; and Climate Change. The 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 and political empowerment of young people in the continent. The Youth Cafés membership program has a mission to gather players from around the world in order to identify, celebrate, enhance and scale up innovative youth development solutions towards sustainable futures that ensure the well-being and fulfilment of young people, the adult allies and the planet. 

Model 

The Youth Café embraces an open-source approach, in which each member is invited to use The Youth Café brand, values and resources, as well as to participate in the enhancement of its capacities and strategies. In this respect, The Youth Café is a collective asset made available to its members, which feed each other and grow together by sharing their respective knowledge and competences. The Youth Café incubates promising youth development initiatives, a catalyst for ideas and innovation, a middle-ground enabling relevant and sustainable partnerships, and a mobilizing force aiming to accelerate local youth action in light of global expertise, all at once. 

The Youth Café commits to develop, maintain and enhance powerful collaborative and curated tools, with the support and at the service of its members, such as: 

  • Creation of platforms and tools to facilitate and amplify the voice of the youth, and ensure their rights and participation in the process of collective construction;

  • Organization of local, regional and global events to celebrate learning and nurture a culture of hope and engagement; 

  • Participation in on-the-ground youth empowerment projects; 

  • Design and implementation of digital participative solutions; 

  • Development of partnerships with innovative youth development communities, and facilitation of relevant bilateral or multilateral collaboration opportunities at the local and regional level among members of the community; 

  • Mapping and dissemination of the best Positive Youth Development practices and collective problem-solving approaches; 

  • Establishment of Thematic Working Groups to co-construct context-specific knowledge and action;

Beliefs 

The topic of youth is growing in importance in African policies and is a key focus of The Youth Café and its partners. We believe that investing in youth is a precondition for accelerated inclusive growth and sustainable development. In accordance with our aspiration to involve young people actively in processes affecting their livelihoods and future prospects, we ensure a strengthened and meaningful inclusion of youth.

The Youth Café is about building together a consistent regional narrative that articulates our collective willingness to co-create a continent with values, actions and ambitions aiming towards the health and well-being of young people, of others and of the planet, in accordance with the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs)

The Youth Café hopes to open the door to an unparalleled multiplier effect as our message spreads and ensure that the next generation of African leaders receive the tools they need to take on the region's biggest problems. 

The Youth Café is also founded around the belief that no single organization has the power to gather, curate, combine, promote and scale all necessary approaches to solve our shared challenges. The Youth Café therefore leverages the power of togetherness to ensure the emergence and development of comprehensive models in response to today’s complex social and environmental challenges. 

Values 

The Youth Cafés current strategic plan looks at today’s youth bulge as an opportunity for development and economic growth and establishes pathways to tackle the many issues facing our youth specifically. To this effect, they Partner with Young People; Leverage Research, Learning, and Adaptation; Cultivate Sustainability and Self Reliance, and Advance Gender-responsive Youth Programming. This is why they are the leading organization for implementing a broad range of cutting-edge positive youth development programs that utilize innovative research, policy, and advocacy actions.

The members and partners of The Youth Café community express the importance of and stand for the following values: 

  • Build a more relevant, sustainable, and effective enabling environment for education and work systems for young people, that recognize their rights and will; 

  • Involve young people at all levels in decision-making processes that will affect their lives; 

  • Partner with young people to build a better, more resilient world for all generations; and 

  • Frame youth programs on a gender-responsive Rights-Based Approach (RBA), implying that young people are considered as ‘rights-holders.

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