Amref Health Africa Partners with Youth Network for Sustainable Development and Hiwot Ethiopia to Empower Youth
Amref Health Africa partnering with Youth Network for Sustainable Development and Hiwot
Our Vision
Amref Health Africa in Ethiopia (Amref) established its Amref Youth Advisory Group (AYAG) in December 2018. The AYAG is composed of 78 (35 females) youth representatives from diverse backgrounds who collaboratively engage in program design, implementation, and evaluation.
Forty-six percent of the beneficiaries Amref serves are youth between the ages of 15-29 years old. Accordingly, Amref recognizes the importance of youth voices, their meaningful engagement, and ensuring youth ownership within programmes and in directing the trajectory of the health outcomes of their communities.
The AYAG is currently active in Addis Ababa, Afar, Amhara and SNNP regions, with plans to expand to the regional and district levels under the basic tenet of enabling young people to lead and advocate for their health and development.
Youth representatives are brought together with the mission of representing youth voices in local and national health and development agendas. As a collective, the AYAG engages in multi-sectoral youth-adult partnerships, and drives forward innovative youth-led solutions.
The success of the AYAG has catalyzed Amref’s development of an organizational-level youth strategy intended to advance youth agency, maximize youth potential, and minimize youth vulnerabilities in health through programmes, learning, and strategic partnerships. We are preparing to launch our Amref Youth Strategy 2021-2022 to ensure we maximize the engagement of young people as equitable partners for youth-led and youth-friendly solutions to Ethiopia’s leading health and development challenges.
Amref Health Africa partnering with Youth Network for Sustainable Development and Hiwot
“With a national median age of 18, Ethiopia’s most valuable resource is
By Yohanna Alemayehu Hailu, AYAG member I believe privilege blocks your vision
Amref Youth Advisory Group (AYAG) representatives are actively engaged in Amref programme
In response to COVID-19 in Ethiopia, the Amref Youth Advisory Group (AYAG)
The 2019 Africa Health Agenda International Conference (AHAIC) Youth Pre-Conference held in
Y-ACT, Youth in Action is an initiative of Amref Health Africa that aims to mentor, support, and increase the capacity of youth advocates to influence youth policy and resource priorities in the areas of gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) at national, sub-national, and grassroots levels in Kenya. Y-ACT believes that Africa’s youth have a huge opportunity to shift in-country policy landscapes to address challenges in gender and sexual and reproductive health & rights (SRHR). At the regional and international levels, Y-ACT pioneered the Youth for UHC movement that garnered a membership of over 2,000 youth advocates from 43 countries since March 2019.
AYAG collaborates with Y-ACT and other youth networks within Amref Health Africa and beyond to work towards unlocking and boost youth potential as well as minimize their vulnerabilities in all fronts of their life.
Youth Position Paper at AHAIC, 2019: Amref hosted AHAIC Youth Pre-conference – Over 400 youth from 23 countries launched the regional Youth4UHC movement, the first Pan-African movement of youth for Universal Health Coverage (UHC), with a current membership of 43 countries globally. The movement developed a joint position paper for UHC priorities. The calls from this position paper were included in the UHC2030 multi-stakeholder hearing statements (link 1; link 2)
Amref Health Africa’s work with youth during COVID-19
The SEMA report highlights work done by Amref with youth in 8 countries during the first six months of the pandemic in Africa.
The Youth in Action Advocacy Curriculum (link).
Meaningful Youth Engagement Score-card (link).
Amref Health Africa