Youth Advocacy

Despite the challenges, young people in Rwanda and around the world are setting examples of overcoming them and they are empowered and leading advocacy that is shifting mindsets and policies. They encourage and guide others to engage and advocate in the physical and digital space, and to connect with peers to mobilize a movement. They foster alliances with other young people and adults alike or build influential networks who sit at the decision-making tables and influence change in safe ways.

Participation is a fundamental right. To enhance active participation and deal with these challenges facing young people, there is a need to empower young people to play a vital role in their own development as well as in that of their communities, help them to learn vital life-skills, develop knowledge on human rights and citizenship and to promote positive civic action including advocacy. To participate effectively, young people should be given the proper tools, such as information, education about and access to their civil rights, and hands on Advocacy knowledge.

“What a disappointing and sad reality! Despite my enthusiasm for advancing healthy nutrition from childhood, whenever I heard about malnutrition, my perceptions were always about the cause being poverty because in the rural community grew up in, the malnutrition was more common in poor families. After many years with this false perception, I came to learn about the reality during my first clinical placement in the hospital after joining the university where I received a severely malnourished child from a wealthier family, a thing that I have never imagined before. It was a very sad reality because nutrition is not only related to poverty and other social, economic and political issues but mainly to the level of awareness on healthy nutrition, be it among wealthier and non-wealthier families. This was not only a situation to me but to my colleagues, who also had the similar perceptions. Feeling indebted to the community due to this one in many situations, my colleagues and I decided to drive a change towards a healthier community through advancing nutrition. This way, we cofounded HEZA Initiative, a youth-led organization through which we serve the community mainly by striving to promote access to education and awareness on balanced diets, nutritious food, and sustainable agriculture.
Like other young people striving to transform their communities, we faced numerous challenges including finding like-minded peers to work with, knowing where to start on our journey, lacking skills to effectively communicate our cause and engage with stakeholders until I got a chance to participate in the youth advocates training. These Youth Advocacy Cascade trainings gathered young advocates with distinguished advocacy issues from across the country to increase their capacities to be better informed and act on issues that impact their lives through advocacy.
From the trainings, I gained the skills on essential advocacy strategies, public speaking, and effective communication techniques. This improved my ability to network, communicate, engage stakeholders, pitch the ideas, create compelling narratives and engage diverse audiences. Not only I have gained the skills, but my network was extended. As the participants, we got a chance to learn from one another and exchange ideas, share the experiences, connect and network and more so, to motivate each other.
Apart from the advocacy skills, networking and learning from one another, as the trained youth advocates, we saw the need to stay connected and amplify our work together. This way, we established the Youth Advocates Network (YAN), an official like-minded peer network that serve as a platform for young people to unify and amplify their voices to further the most meaningful cause. This network is composed of youth-led organizations, associations and individual advocates and has a day to day communication channels through which young people exchange ideas, share their works and opportunities, support and learn from one another. Honestly, the network has been transforming our work and it is fueling our advocacy work through supporting one another.
Also, the training equipped me with the confidence and expertise to approach decision-makers, media outlets, and community leaders. Amazingly, during the training, I had a chance to meet the UNICEF staff and pitched my organization’s upcoming activities including the “One Egg Per Child per Every Day” campaign and got the support to conduct this campaign under which 50 teen mothers were given the hens as a source of eggs to feed their children, and their children were fed with eggs on site. After successfully conducting the campaign, I used the gained skills to successfully organize the first ever World Nutrition Day 2023 event in Rwanda, and engaged distinguished stakeholders like UNICEF Rwanda, FAO, National Child Development Agency. During this event, 2500 eggs were fed to the children on site, 20 families were provided with 30 eggs each for feeding their children for one month. Currently, our Organization is partnering with All Good Venture to establish the Egg hub to help and empower teen mothers with entrepreneurship skills, provide them with the seed funding and hens, and advocate for needs of their children and theirs, given that they are more vulnerable and candidates to malnutrition”. Samuel, a Youth Advocacy Graduate.

In a way to meaningfully engage the young people in and enhance the youth-driven advocacy, in September 2022, UNICEF ESAR conducted Youth Advocacy Champion Training of Trainers (ToT) based on the Youth Advocacy Guide (YAG) and participants were young people from Eastern and Southern Africa including Rwanda. After ToT training, all trained youth advocate champions committed to conducting cascade training in their respective countries so that YAG can be disseminated to many people.
It is in that background, trained youth advocate champions from Community Health Boosters (CHB) and Care and Help Organization have organized and conducted 4 cohorts of cascade training under the sponsorship of UNICEF Rwanda.
The Cascade training is a continuation of UNICEF ESARO’s and UNICEF Rwanda's efforts to work with young people to build up a cohort of young advocates and YAG trainers in the region. Youth-led advocacy and the YAG are dependent on building a critical mass of young people who understand the principles, key actions, and strategies for conducting advocacy and how to train peers in these.
The UNICEF Youth Advocacy Guide (YAG) is a resource created by young people, for young people, to support and empower young advocates on their journeys towards influencing meaningful change at local, national and global levels.

The YAG cascade training was conducted in 4 distinguished cohorts, 3 days for each cohort, from December 2022 to January 2023 (12th –14th Dec 2022, 9th -11th Jan 2023, 16th-18th Jan 2023 & 23rd-25th, 2023). Under these training, the total of 81 young advocates (39 girls and 42 boys), with advocacy issues ranging from sexual and reproductive health, Gender equality, mental health, child protection, climate change, education, one health, Disability Inclusion, and Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs). These young people represent various youth-led organizations and networks, students’ associations, and community-based organizations, and are hailed from different districts of Rwanda. Some representatives of the National Youth Council also took part in the training.
All cohorts received the same package and the training was delivered in a youth-friendly, conducive, and inclusive environment that enabled all the participants to learn and engage comfortably. The training was delivered through presentations; group work and assignments with a high participation and engagement of the trainees.
Apart from the advocacy skills, networking and learning from one another, the trained youth advocates saw the need to stay connected and amplify their work together. Therefore, they informally established the Youth Advocates Network (YAN), a like-minded peer network to further the causes most meaningful to them and have a built-in support system that will contribute to their overall advocacy success and mental well-being.
The participants called distinguished stakeholders to support and engage the established Youth Advocates Network, the expansion of the YAG trainings to reach as many youths as possible and making it a continuous yearly program.

This was a wrap-up session organized and conducted to facilitate the trainers and trainees to present the outcomes of the four YAG training cohorts to the Ministry of Youth and other strategic partners, and discuss on next steps and possible scaling up of the emerging innovations proposed by Youth Advocates.
Objectives:
• Showcase the benefits of the YAG training and action plan presentation
• Provision of certificates to trained Youth Advocates
• Launch a Youth Advocates Network and peer networking platform for young changemakers.
The participants of this event were the trained advocates, youth with promising advocacy work, Ministry of Youth and other relevant government institutions, youth-led non-governmental organizations and others working with young people.
The event was executed through presentations and storytelling, the documentary video of YAG journey in Rwanda, Exhibition of the initiatives of trained advocates, Panel discussion on the meaningful youth engagement, Presentation of the recommendations and call to actions generated during the YAG training, speeches of distinguished officials and youth advocates, awarding the certificates to the trained youth advocates, and ended by the networking cocktail.