Youth As the Agents of Change for Gender Equality

UN Women Europe and Central Asia Regional Office ran an eight-month Youth Engagement Initiative to provide a space for young activists not as recipients and beneficiaries, but as active agents of change in the processes of transformative actions of the Generation Equality journey. The key principle of the program was inviting young people to DEMAND, LEAD, ACT and CREATE real change with the support of UN Women and developing each next step of the initiative based on young people’s feedback and ideas.

This report aims to describe and evaluate the results of the youth engagement initiative, which consists of four parts. #YOUthDemand was an online youth-led campaign which was co-created and led by the youth activists in cooperation with UN Women aiming to collect the demands and needs of the young people across the region. #YOUthLead Workshops created unique digital spaces for youth activists and UN Women to learn, build, and together create ideas to mobilize communities and trigger action across the region by expanding the activism. #YouthAct Projects were eight innovative youth-led initiatives which were born out of the workshops, and created and implemented by youth activists who received seed funding and mentoring sessions. Lastly, #YOUthCreate Process consisted of a series of focus groups, consultations and an in-person workshop to further explore youth's experiences as gender activists and to co-create a strategy for youth engagement in the region for the next five years.