Youth policy advocacy
1. I have been engaged in youth policy advocacy work since 1992.
2. What worked well was development of policies e.g. overall Technical Education, Vocational and Entrepreneurship Training (TEVET) Policy, Disability Policy for TEVET, Gender Policy for TEVET and Mainstremaing of HIV & AIDS in TEVET.
What did not work well was implementation of these policies and monitoring and evaluation of the same.
3. The key advocacy messages were to do with mainstreaming of gender, disability and HIV & AIDS issues in TEVET. These were mostly targeted to youths regsitered in the 300+ TEVET institutions in Zambia.
Thanks for your input. It seems a majority of us have identified policy implementation as a challenge, this therefore presents opportunity for advocacy work around policy implementation. Can we provide suggestions on how we can develop an effective advocacy strategy to address policy implementation challenges? Broadly, what are the actions we would take, what would be key message, whom would we target to relay the message to?
To develop an effective advocacy strategy may require setting up Information, Education and Communication (IEC) units or departments in organisations dealing with youth work. This unit which has to communicate with the outside world on policy implementation will need to advocate that departments responsible for policy implementation are funded adequately.
It is true that most countries have beautiful policies but implementation remains the biggest challenge. Advocacy is very important to ensure the policy makers implement the policies. We need to form stratgic alliances around a particilar issue, and work closely with the media
Dear Nmunala
I think one major challenge/problem of implementation of policy is the non involvement of the youth in fomulating policies. That constitute a violation of their right. I think we shall be making progress in implementation of policy if we begin to involve the youth. Would you agree?
