Empowering Youth To Drive Sustainable Change Through Innovation

Youth Empowerment Through Social Innovation And Entrepreneurship Has Incredible Potential To Solve Problems At A Grassroots Level If Youth Are Given Robust Platforms To Connect And Act.

Transitioning to adulthood has become more difficult for young people due to new challenges in accessing quality education, decent income and jobs, and affordable housing.

Socioeconomic insecurities have spilled into young people expressing less trust in national governments and in institutionalised forms of participation. At the same time, youth demonstrate awareness for inequalities and climate change and their repercussions on wellbeing, inclusive growth and intergenerational equity. ‌‌Sound public governance is crucial to empower young people by facilitating access to quality public services, increasing trust and participation, and promoting an equitable distribution of resources across generations.

Currently, half of the world’s population is under the age of 30, with 90 percent of this age group living in emerging and developing economies and 50 percent unemployed or working and living in poverty. The aspirations and needs of young people, and their ability to meet their full potential, remain largely unmet due to stagnating economic growth and limited opportunities for advancement. Despite the odds being stacked against them, we know that when youth are empowered, development outcomes improve.

1. Create inclusive opportunities for youth to collaborate and build networks

Social Innovation is a compelling and unifying banner for youth to rally around, but opportunities that support engagement across sectors in this space are limited. Diverse perspectives are critical for understanding the nuance and complexity of social problems, and inclusive teams produce innovative ideas because they unlock novel understanding that is otherwise hidden when some perspectives are absent or muted. The Youth knows that inclusivity means creating opportunities to engage with representation from all backgrounds, elevating the voices of those who live with the problem, and intentionally integrating those perspectives into problem-framing and ideation activities.

Youth empowerment is different from youth development because development is centered on developing individuals, while empowerment is focused on creating greater community change relies on the development of individual capacity.[3]

Empowerment movements, including youth empowerment, originate, gain momentum, become viable, and become institutionalized.[1] Youth empowerment is often addressed as a gateway to intergenerational equity, civic engagement and democracy building. Activities may focus on youth-led media, youth rights, youth councils, youth activism, youth involvement in community decision-making,[4] and other methods.

Youth empowerment through social innovation and entrepreneurship has incredible potential to solve problems at a grassroots level if youth are given robust platforms to connect and act. More than 200 youth teams so far have applied to 75 slots in the follow-on UNLEASH+ program since its launch last year. Youth need more partners, platforms, and ecosystems that will provide comprehensive support to early stage ventures to help them make the leap from ideation to scale.

2. Develop supportive programs that target early stage ventures

For youth to translate unmet needs in their communities into viable and sustainable income generating opportunities for themselves and others, they need targeted support. In addition to practical tools that allow them to identify and understand problems well to identify the right market opportunities, they also need relevant business frameworks, mentorship, expert insight, funding, partners, and more.

There are various types of empowerment programs across the globe that empower youth through many different tactics and programs. Programs can operate in a variety of settings. The majority of programs operate in more than one setting, which may be a key factor in their success. The beneficial outcomes to youth empowerment programs are improved social skills, improved behavior, increased academic achievement, increased self-esteem and increased self-efficacy.

There are programs are aimed at just empowering women and young girls. Regardless of specific goals or methods, empowering effects include improving women's wellbeing, self-esteem, and self-efficacy, and enhancing social status by teaching technical and organizational skills.

Other youth empowerment programs are focused on poverty alleviation. Living standards are for those living in poverty are declining causing forms of deprivation as it relates to food, resources and education. Programs aimed at empowering poor youth, work toward livelihood protection or livelihood promotion.

There are also empowerment movements that use the social action model, aiming for disadvantaged people to become empowered, organized, and educated so that they may create change. These programs advocate for constructive confrontations to enhance the social power of people who are considered disadvantaged. Another model is the 5C's model that focuses on emphasizing competence, confidence, connection, character and caring. A sixth C of contribution to society was later added. This model focuses primarily on engagement as a key marker of positive youth development, emphasizing the need to foster initiative. Youth-adult partnerships are another type of empowerment method used around the world. This method has been defined as a developmental process and a community practice. The partnership involves people of different ages working together on community issues over a period of time. The method emphasizes reciprocity among adults and youth with a focus on shared decision making and reflective learning. The concept of shared control is key for empowering youth.

Youth empowerment has also been used as a framework to prevent and reduce youth violence. Research shows that these youth empowerment programs can improve conflict avoidance and resolution skills, increase group leadership skills, and civic efficacy and improve ethnic identity and reduce

3.Equip youth with practical skills and tools to practice innovation

For most youth around the world, education is not easily accessible and, even when secured, does not guarantee access to quality employment opportunities. Critical thinking and problem-framing skills are indispensable for workforce readiness because they enable youth to reimagine challenges as opportunities in day-to-day life. An effective way to approach problem-framing is through human-centered design, which uses empathy to deconstruct problems. By using design thinking to understand problems from the perspective of the individual or community facing a challenge, youth have a better chance of identifying unique solutions that will meet those needs — including their own. From our experience with UNLEASH, increasing the availability of innovation events and training where youth can access and gain experience with human-centered design tools will help mobilize them to address development and sustainability challenges, and encourage social entrepreneurship as a viable form of self-employment.