Directory: Important Agencies 1

• Sections:     Intro & Context | Themes & Trends | Donors & Funds

3. Directory of International Donors Funding the Youth Sector

UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION (UNESCO)

www.unesco.org/en/youth

UNESCO’s objective is to empower young people by reaching out to them, responding to their expectations and ideas, and fostering useful and long-lasting skills. UNESCO encourages the participation of youth and their engagement in dialogue. It also supports the integration of youth concerns and issues into the policy agendas of member states in education, the sciences, culture, and communication in order to create spaces and opportunities for empowering young people and giving recognition, visibility, and credibility to their contributions. UNESCO’s youth program focuses on interagency cooperation, cooperation with NGOs, youth forum(s), and youth policies and programs. UNESCO does not offer grants for youth-related initiatives, although it has an elaborate operational program that organizes training, convening, and youth policy-related activities. From 1999, UNESCO operated a small grants facility for young people and youth organizations to conduct projects related to HIV/AIDS, but it appears to have been discontinued. If an international nongovernmental organization (INGO) active in the field of youth has operational relations with UNESCO, it may request assistance for specific activities from UNESCO’s Participation Program.

UNESCO’s Participation Program

http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=32042&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

The Participation Program enables member states to carry out important projects, particularly in the organization’s main areas of competence. Through this program UNESCO aims to:

  • achieve its objectives by participating in the subregional, inter-regional, and regional projects, led by its member states and directly related to the activities of the organization;
  • strengthen the partnership between the organization and its member states as well as between the organization and INGOs;
  • boost the actions of the national commissions for UNESCO;
  • achieve better visibility of UNESCO’s action in its member states.

The Participation Program helps to invigorate the action of the national commissions for UNESCO, release creative energies in a number of fields, and mobilize efforts in pursuing and implementing projects of current interest. Projects and action plans may be submitted by member states, by several member states from one region (for regional projects), or by INGOs that have formal or operational relations with UNESCO (the list of eligible INGOs is established by UNESCO’s executive committee). Proposals must relate to UNESCO’s major programs, its interdisciplinary projects, its activities on behalf of Africa, the least-developed countries, youth and women, or the activities of the national commissions for UNESCO.

The different types of assistance that can be requested under the Participation Program are:

  • specialists and consultants, not including staff costs;
  • study grants and fellowships;
  • publications, periodicals, documentation, translation, and reproduction;
  • supplies and equipment (other than vehicles);
  • conferences, meetings, translation, and interpretation services, participants’ travel costs (not including those of UNESCO staff members);
  • seminars and training courses.

The budget approved for the Participation Program for 2008–9 was US$18.8 million, which is 5% of the total amount approved for INGO activities in that time period.

UNITED NATIONS CHILDREN’S FUND (UNICEF)

www.unicef.org

UNICEF is mandated by the UN General Assembly to advocate for the protection of children’s rights, to help meet their basic needs, and to expand their opportunities to reach their full potential under the guidance of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It strives to establish children’s rights as enduring ethical principles and international standards of behavior by mobilizing political will and resources. UNICEF recognizes that young people are speaking out and taking active leadership roles throughout society. UNICEF works with and for adolescents to promote their rights to meaningful participation and positive development. Officially, UNICEF works with young people up to age 18, but many of its projects also work with older young people. At the international level, UNICEF does not conduct grant-making activities. However, it has several large-scale operational programs that support youth development and youth participation in development.

The Junior 8 Summits (J8)

www.j8summit.com

UNICEF organizes the J8 Summits each year in conjunction with G8 Summits. Young people take part in workshops, roundtable discussions, and participatory exercises to help them grapple with and agree on the priority issues and recommendations on the G8 agenda. At the end of their discussions, the J8 delegates write a report outlining their conclusions and recommendations, which is presented to the G8 leaders in a face-to-face dialogue. Topics in the J8 agenda have included education, HIV/AIDS, climate change, development in Africa, tolerance, and global health. Participants to the J8 Summit include teams of young people representing the G8 countries as well as a delegation of young people from non-G8 countries representing the various regions of the world. Each year, the details of the Junior 8 Summit are determined by the G8 host government collaborating with UNICEF. At the time of writing, the details of the Junior 8 Summit 2010 are not yet available. Information will be posted at www.j8summit.com/about-j8-summit in due course.

Voices of Youth (VoY)

www.unicef.org/voy

Since 1995, the VoY website has focused on exploring the educational and community-building potential of the Internet, and facilitating the active and substantive participation of young people in discussions on child rights and development-related issues. Through web boards, interactive quizzes, youth leadership profiles, live chats and more, VoY provides thousands of young people from over 180 countries with an opportunity to self-inform, engage in lively debate, and partner with their peers and decision makers, in particular in relation of HIV/AIDS and the themes of the WPAY.

Focus on HIV/AIDS: UNICEF is very active in the area of children and adolescents and HIV/AIDS. In close collaboration with partners, UNICEF provides support to scale up efforts to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV; promote pediatric HIV diagnosis and treatment, as well as the protection, care, and support for children affected by AIDS; and prevent HIV transmission in adolescents in over 100 countries.

Other themes: UNICEF’s activities span most areas of the WPAY, including education, the environment, substance use, justice for children and adolescents, girls and young women, and armed conflict.

UNITED NATIONS POPULATION FUND (UNFPA)

www.unfpa.org/adolescents/index.htm

UNFPA promotes and protects the rights of young people. It envisions a world in which adolescents and young people of both sexes have optimal opportunities to develop their full potential, to freely express themselves and have their views respected, and to live free of poverty, discrimination, and violence. UNFPA works to empower adolescents and youth and promote health, including sexual and reproductive health. UNFPA takes a holistic, multisectoral, collaborative approach, framing adolescent and youth issues within the larger development context of poverty reduction. Its programs advocate for an essential package of social protection interventions for youth that includes education, sexual and reproductive health services, support for establishing livelihoods, and intergenerational alliances.

To achieve this, UNFPA works across sectors and with many partners to:

  • empower adolescents and youth with skills to achieve their dreams, think critically, and express themselves freely;
  • promote health by giving youth access to sexual and reproductive health information, education, commodities, and services;
  • connect young people to livelihood and employment programs;
  • uphold the rights of young people, especially girls and marginalized groups, to grow up healthy and safe so that they can receive a fair share of social investments;
  • encourage young people’s leadership and participation in decisions that affect them, including the development plans of their societies.

Its main areas of operational work with or on youth and adolescents are youth participation, education and empowerment, youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health services, policy initiatives, adolescent girls, HIV/AIDS, managing in times of crisis, and international agreements.

BUDGET: Total regular and other income of UNFPA in 2007 was US$752.2 million. This includes $419 million in voluntary contributions from governments and private donors, $18.3 million in interest income, and $19.8 million in other income. Other contributions in 2007 totaled $295.1 million. Project expenditures (regular resources) in 2007 totaled $273.6 million. The 2007 figure includes $218 million for country programs and $55.6 million for inter-country (regional, interregional, and headquarters) programs. Technical support services amounted to $18.6 million. Of the total regular resourced expenditures, UNFPA provided $146.6 million in assistance for reproductive health; $52.2 million for population and development; $20.8 million for gender equality and women’s empowerment; and $54 million for program coordination and assistance. While there is no indication of which proportion of this expenditure is spent on young people, a significant part of UNFPA’s program has young people as beneficiaries. See www.unfpa.org/about/funding.htm.

UNFPA Special Youth Program

www.unfpa.org/adolescents/participation.htm

UNFPA has initiated the Special Youth Program, which recruits outstanding young people ages 20 to 24 from developing countries to join UNFPA for a nine-month paid fellowship that is divided between UNFPA’s New York headquarters and their home country. Through this program, UNFPA engages young people in policy development and programming and builds their capacity and leadership skills in addressing population, sexual and reproductive health, and gender issues.

The Youth Peer Education Network (Y-PEER)

www.unfpa.org/adolescents/participation.htm
www.youthpeer.org/web/guest/home

Y-PEER is a comprehensive youth-to-youth initiative pioneered by the UNFPA. Y-PEER is a network of more than 600 nonprofit organizations, schools, and governmental institutions; its membership includes more than 7,300 young people from 40 countries who work in the many areas of adolescent sexual and reproductive health. Members of Y-PEER include young people who are active peer educators, trainers of trainers and youth advocates for adolescent sexual and reproductive health. These young people contribute to and benefit from the resource materials, tools, training programs, and campaigns provided by the Y-PEER networks nationally and internationally.

Y-PEER is based on person-to-person meetings, and electronic communication via an interactive website and national and international listservs. The website and listservs provide peer educators with access to state-of-the-art information on peer education, prevention of STIs and HIV/AIDS, and other sexual and reproductive health-related topics. Y-PEER also offers computer-based distance learning courses; hosts training events, campaigns, workshops and videoconferences; and produces tools that facilitate peer education, youth-adult partnerships, “edutainment,” and youth advocacy. It builds partnerships in order to advocate for national youth development strategies; increased access to information, knowledge, and services on sexual and reproductive health; the sharing of lessons learned across borders and between cultures; standards of practice and improved training resources for peer educators; and the strengthening of the knowledge base of peer educators and trainers of trainers.

BUDGET:

No information is available to the public concerning funding for Y-PEER, although it was initiated by UNFPA and continues to receive its support through annual operating budgets in the different countries where UNFPA and Y-PEER have a presence. Further, although no figures are available about the budget volume of Y-PEER’s program of operational activities, the following figures provide an indication of scale. In 2008, Y-PEER reached a total of 260,227 young people. It distributed 132,833 IEC materials (Information, Education Communication materials designed to change or reinforce health-related behaviors) and handed out 172,287 condoms. It also organized 123 meetings within national networks or with partners; 100 training sessions, including national, regional, and specialized trainings of trainers; 99 peer education sessions, in- or out-of-school sessions, workshops, and seminars for different target groups and various health issues; 124 planning and preparation meetings preceding advocacy actions, larger events, and international days; 7 campaigns on specific topics and for particular regions; 21 World AIDS Day activities; 102 miscellaneous activities, such as Internet actions, movie presentations, and media campaigns; 4 regional events, including regional HIV and AIDS conferences; and 7 international events, including the International AIDS Conference in Mexico.

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