Pause & Reflect Workshop Report: Up to Youth Activity

The project aims to empower youth to make a positive impact on their communities and build youth resiliency to risky behaviors. The activity has three primary objectives: mobilize youth to be forces for positive change, develop and demonstrate life/soft skills among youth, and develop, build, and support resilience partners in fostering an environment for youth to engage in a positive and meaningful way. The project is implemented by Global Communities, an international development non-profit organization, and is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The project team and youth partners identified and captured achievements of the project to date, bottlenecks and challenges to implementation, and potential changes to optimize youth outputs and outcomes. A Pause & Reflect Workshop was held by USAID's Up to Youth Activity in Brezovica, Kosovo on September 16-18, 2021. The workshop aimed at identifying adaptations and improvements to USAID's U2Y Activity in terms of programmatic content/focus, and organization/management. The workshop utilized two approaches: Appreciative Inquiry and Big Picture Reflection. These methods were considered the most appropriate approaches to achieving the intended objectives of the workshop given its mid-term review period of the project. The workshop collected information at two levels: individual inputs from each team member (written); and group level (both in smaller groups and plenary discussions with all team members). The project team and partner youth noted the quality of content delivered by the U2Y Activity has been high, despite a reduced impact of capacity development thought to be a result of U2Y's online delivery model necessitated by the pandemic. Lack of in-person interaction among partner youth and facilitating networking among them remains one of the biggest challenges of U2Y Activity to date. The project team and partner youth also noted that the capacity development should be expanded and enriched beyond its current scope, to better reflect the needs and potential of the target youths. There was a general consensus among the project team and partner youth that there is significant potential at the local and national level to meaningfully engage youth, sharpen their skills and competencies, and increase their agency to better their communities. The project team expects that this will be more effectively achieved through the Social Change Fund, which has just commenced funding its first initiatives. Additional discussion explored ways for U2Y to support partner youth in more effectively accessing funding from other programs and sources to implement priorities identified in each community. The challenge of program delivery during a pandemic was identified as one of the biggest challenges of the activity, requiring adaptations and adjustments to masking and social distancing measures. Main achievements of U2Y include adapting and delivering quality online training programs for youth, managing to deliver results across all objectives despite COVID-19, delivering content that is relevant and proposed by youth, and empowering youth to advocate for their needs.