Search implemented “Youth Talk – Empowering Young People through Media” in Central African Republic, Mali, and South Sudan between 2019 and 2022, with support from the Bezos Family Foundation.
The project aimed to empower youth in the three conflict-affected countries and give them opportunities to raise issues, address topics of interests, etc. through producing radio programs. It had three interconnected objectives: 1) To amplify the voice and agency of young people around each country’s critical social and political issues related to building lasting peace; 2) To strengthen mutual understanding and collaboration between youth and older adults; and to 3) To capture and share learning and tools with donors, policy makers, and practitioners.
The project successfully empowered hard to reach youth by providing them with a range of transferable skills that they have been able to use both within and beyond the project. It leveraged the power of media to amplify their voices: 90% of surveyed community members found that the radio programs produced by the young journalists as part of the project bring an added value on critical social and political issues, a significant improvement from the baseline. “”Youth Talk”” also strengthened mutual understanding and collaboration between youth and older adults, including decision-makers, and had a positive impact on the wider communities’ perceptions of the validity of young journalists’ and youth’ perspectives. In terms of sustainability, in addition to attitudinal and behavioral change brought about by the program among both youth participants and adults, the final evaluation identified several initiatives beyond the scope of the project, started by youth journalists in Mali and by
listeners in South Sudan, that also demonstrated the sustainability of program impacts.
