SFCG Children and Youth

SELF-TRANSFORMATION – Help young people manage the way conflict affects their life by creating space for them to contemplate or understand conflict.

VOICE – Focus on enabling youth to find their voice or create platforms upon which they can contribute to the debates that are taking place in their society. Often young people want to reach across the divide, but they do not have access. Programs can attempt to bridge this gap.

CREATE “5-DEGREE SHIFTS” – Help youth direct their energies and resources to positive activities, e.g. helping potential electoral thugs to become election monitors.  When working with adolescents and youth who are involved in violence or negative activities, it is helpful to think, not of “turning them around”, but of encouraging them to peruse alternative goals.

WORK WITH “MULTIPLIER YOUTH” – Focusing on young people who have a strong influence on their peers can significantly impact a youth community. Often, natural youth leaders, or multiplier youth, are key to the sustainability and effectiveness of our initiatives.

WORK WITH AND THROUGH EXISTING YOUTH ORGANISATIONS AND STRUCTURES – Support and empower existing structures while providing the technical assistance needed for youth to participate in their communities and political systems.

REPLACE THE POWER OF THE GUN – Offer alternative sources of power to at risk youth who are able to acquire political, social and economic power by owning a gun.

CREATE ADULT-YOUTH PARTNERSHIPS – Focus not only on creating opportunities for young people but also bridging the generational gap between youth and elders.

IDENTITY FORMATION – Shapes people’s identities (or enables young people to develop multi-dimensional identities)

CREATE METAPHORS  – Create metaphors that build peace and progress in societies with young people as co-creators of these metaphors.

POLICY – Address the ways children and youth are dealt with by influencing policy at the local, national, regional and international level, with the aim of creating a safe space for young people to inform policies that concern them and to facilitate the rights of young people as stated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, African Youth Charter and other key policy instruments.

More details of each of these can be found at at this link.