In general, youths are a society’s backbone. At any moment, youth participation in all aspects of society is important. Unfortunately, since the beginning of this society, Afghan youths, whether male and female, have been in a state of deprivation. They play no or a limited role in local and national decision-making processes or leadership initiatives.
As a result, youth isolation, whether deliberate or inadvertent, can lead to drug abuse, unlawful and criminal actions, unhappiness, migration, and other problems, despite the fact that youths are a potentially important group and actor in shaping the future.
Through civic and political engagement, leadership development, participation in decision-making processes, skill development, and capacity building programmes, the project focuses on youths in order to improve and promote their social status and prepare them to become leaders for bringing change to their communities.
Executive summary
Generally youths are the backbone of a society. Youth’s participation in all aspects of society is very important at any time. Unfortunately as we see that Afghan youth generation both male and female face a state of deprivation since the origin of this society. They have no or limited role in decision making process or leadership programs at the local and national level. According to UNDP survey, 68 per cent of the country’s population is under 25 years old representing the largest demographic cohort in the country’s history. So isolation of youths either intentionally or unintentionally can lead them to drug abuse, illegal and criminal actions, depression, migration and so on, while youths are the potential group and actor for structuring future of Afghanistan. The implementing organization mainly focuses on Afghan youths in order to improve and promote their social status and prepare them to become leaders for bringing change at their communities through civic and political engagement, strengthen of leadership, participation in decision making process, skills development, and capacity building programs.
There is a great and effective work to be done for Afghan youth generation to make them feel empowered and train them for playing an important role in their society. The project will be working closely with youths in Badakhshan province. This project is designed to provide gender awareness, leadership, and advocacy, trainings directly benefitting youths and advocates media campaigns through Radios, Printed Media, and Boards. This media campaign will reach to almost all youth generation in the target area and raise awareness about their active role in civil society and policy initiatives.
The project will adapt a cultural sensitive strategy, where all the activities will be planned and conducted in a way that the negative impacts will be avoided. Youths, which are both male and female, will be the target and they will be reached during the course of this project. Based on our team observations, our society is now ready to accept that youths are an important part of the society. The project will take advantage of this new emerging feeling of the society and build upon the concept that this is the time where Afghan youths must play a great contribution to bring prosperity to the war-affected society by influencing the policy initiatives.
In this generation media has become an important part and plays a vital role in our society. Additionally, the stronger role of media is now obvious in Afghanistan; it has broken the shackles of the centuries-long self-imposed superstitions in almost every walk of life. People feel empowered with the rising level of awareness on various issues. The media can eliminate the existing deprivation of youths and the steps could be taken towards their empowerment and their role in the Afghan civil society and policy initiatives. So through broadcasting of radio programs and messages about youth empowerment and their role in the society, they will be aware and raise their voice for their rights and achieve their desire goals in the society.
Finally, this project will make the youth generation fully aware of their rights and responsibilities in the society. They will be encouraged to take part in community development and better understand their role in the region.
The beneficiaries of this project are totally youth generation.
- Direct beneficiaries:
- 2000 Youths in the area (45% female) with considering bellow criteria.
- – Aged between 18-30
- – Unemployed and poor youths
- – Interested in program
- – Committed to participate in program activities
- – Having good background
- – Prefer to have leadership and lobbying spirit
- – Fresh graduates who are looking for job
- Indirect beneficiaries:
- Assuming that the beneficiaries live in families with 7 members, then 2000×7=14000 indirect beneficiaries.
Main type of intervention Support for /promotion of youth-led action
Main theme Civic Engagement and Participation
Objective(s) of the project
By implementing this project, we aim to build the skill level, social participation, leadership, and social status of youth through the following activities in order to prepare them to become leaders for bringing positive changes at their communities.
- Capacity Building trainings for youths and other CSOs that are working for them in Badakhshan.
- Raise the level of awareness among the people of Badakhshan province.
- Influence the Government policies for giving a major role to youths in the decision-making and allocating increased funding youths in Badakhshan and other provinces of Afghanistan.
- Provide training to a select group of youth in basic human rights, as well as conflict management and negotiation, leadership and communication skills.
- Encourage youth to participation in the socio-political process.
- Promote youth volunteerism for peace and development.
Implementation strategy
- Staffing: For successful implementation of the project and achieving its objective, after formal announcement of the positions through web site and provincial office, Implementing NGO has planned to hire professional people for better implementation of the project.
- Project orientation workshop: Community Development Manager will hold a project orientation workshop for explaining project goal, objective, and expected results. During this workshop a comprehensive field operation plan will be developed.
- Coordination and community mobilization: Team of implementing agency will mobilize the concerned groups with a formal strategy; to be devised for each group. The youth leaders and activists will be identified at first level and they will be fully involved throughout the course of the project.
- Government’s concerned departments will be mobilized for working in coordination with implementing agency for promoting youth empowerment and participation in the democratic processes and policy initiatives. Political parties’ leadership at district and provincial level will be mobilized to work with implementing agency during the course of project and finally own the project establishments and sustain them.
- Implementing agency will mobilize the intellectuals to join hands with us for making a group to develop youth empowerment related messages and papers for printing and dissemination. This intellectual group will be facilitated to work youth friendly pressure group and lead the programs of youth empowerment.
- For attracting more cooperation of local authorities, coordination meetings would be held by Executive Director and program manager and authorities such as provincial and district governors, Directorate of Women affairs, youth department and district shuras, and CSOs representatives. In this stage, along with coordination meetings, the target community CDCs and leaders would be contacted, in order to make them informed of project component and attract their support to the project.
- The project different sections will be working in close coordination with each other. The planning will be done in joint meetings; where all the coordinators of different sections will be participating. During the planning session, every section will coordinate its activities with other section. Especially the administration will provide the exact details before planning activities.
- The project will rely on all the sections to make coordination with the relevant target group. The youths’ section will coordinate with the youth groups and CSOs. They will also plan joint activities with mobilization section; where male and female organizers will help coordinate their activities. The Mobilization section will make coordination the relevant Government departments and this coordination will be the most important activity for the success of the project.
- Beneficiary selection: Following the community mobilization process which includes actions, such as Orientation of community members, Rapid community assessment and so on, to end the beneficiary selection, a team for beneficiary selection is going to be formed. The team includes members of CDCs and CCDCs, village elders, Implementing NGO staff and government officials. The selection process would be based on the main criteria of being within ages 18-30 including additional criteria for this age group such as interested in program, unemployed and poor youths who are committed to participate in program activities, having good background, prefer to have leadership and lobbying spirit. Implementing NGO’s staff then would continue with follow up on the selection process to ensure its fairness. This methodology assures that lists of beneficiaries is accepted by the communities and helped prevent tensions and conflicts.
- Creation of messages/ Radio programs/ Billboards: Implementing NGO will hire the services of some competent/ creative workers to develop the youths’ related messages and slogans. These will be used extensively throughout the project period. The messages will be concise and effective and easy to read and understand.
- These messages will be displayed on billboards at visible places. The messages will draw attention towards the under played role the half of population i.e. youths of the area. The youths will take these messages as a training tool; where they can explore ways to participate in the affairs of the civil society and influence the policies through democratic processes. There will be messages about the steps towards youths’ empowerment like registration for national IDs, Voter rights and local institutions established for the protection youths.
- These creative workers will also develop radio programs. We are already in consultation for signing contract with radio stations to broadcast our messages and programs. These programs will be made understandable for the common masses, so that, the messages touch the target audience. These programs will be observed closely and will be improved with the feedback of the public.
- Surveys will be carried out on regular basis and the success of the events will be shared on broader level. Through this method, we will measure how much youths’ feel empowered and participate in the civic activities. The level of training of the audience via these programs will also be measured and some of the basic questions about the youths’ empowerment, participation, civil society and their role in community development etc will be measured.
- Newsletter (Recording Success Stories/ Challenges): A monthly newsletter will be issued, covering all monthly events, experts’ views and other youths’ related news and activities. This newsletter will try to cover youths and other leaders/ intellectuals who have a demonstrated great role for youths. The newsletter will also cover the success stories of the project. Any employee/ worker/ activist who performs extraordinarily work during the course of the project will be given special pages and his interviews will be printed.
- This will cover any impediments/ challenges and problems, which come across during the project duration. Also this part gives special focus to the challenges of youths in the area, which they face. The newsletter will be a media tool to convince all its readers for accepting the youths’ empowered role.
- Conduct training to target beneficiaries: The youth will be trained in areas such as leadership, advocacy, gender awareness, and communication. Each networks would be trained on mentioned topics. Mentioned trainings would improve the skills of youths in leadership, lobbying and advocacy, thereby they can play significant role in society and they can propose solution for raised problem within society, also the training would enable them to remove obstacles which originate from discrimination against youths. The trainings will be for the following groups:
- Training for youths leaders and activists
- Training for youth workers
- Seminar for intellectuals
- Seminar for political parties’ workers
- Capacity building programs such, basic management, organizational behavior, human rights, etc.
Some other training will be conducted on need basis on the urgent issues as and when these come across during the course of the project
Conduct literacy course: one of the main obstacles against youth improvement and leadership is illiteracy, for swiping aside mentioned obstacle, literacy courses based on Ministry of education curriculum would be conducted in each youth network level. For each youth network a local trainer would be hired to conduct literacy course. All required inputs and material for conducting mentioned courses would be supplied.
Improve relation of networks with CDCs and DDCs: for improving leadership skills of youths and engaging them in decision making process, the project technical staffs would contact with CDCs and DDCs in target area and would explain the role of youths in community. Thereby they would convince them to let representatives of youth networks to participate in their sessions, and decision-making, also to have and consider their recommendation, which derive from discussions in youth networks. Thereby, youth representative would be engaged and participate in CDCs and DDCs meetings and can act actively in community decision process.
Organizing trainings/ workshops/ seminars: Once the key stakeholders identified and mobilized for the cause of youths’ empowerment then a series of the training workshops/ seminars will be initiated; with aiming to build the capacity of the target groups to work more actively for the cause of the project.
Project Management: Implementing NGO team will be working under the leadership of a very highly qualified project manager. The project will be working under the specialized sections. Specialist coordinators will head these sections.
The media section: This section will be responsible for developing messages, making radio programs and display of these messages on billboards. They will also have expert services of consultants for creating messages and slogans, Consultants will write pamphlets for printing and dissemination on youths’ rights and empowerment. This team will be developing monthly newsletters too.
Mobilization Section: The section will have services of expert coordinator and experienced organizers. They will be mobilizing every mentioned group of society for the successful implementation of the project. This section will also mobilize the individuals from Government departments, CSOs and other activists for attending the training and participation in seminars.
Training Section: This section will be working under the command of a highly professional training specialist. He will be making modules and methodologies for trainings; in collaboration with relevant field’s master trainers. This section will provide support in selecting the training venues, Audio visual aids and other supporting materials.
Youths Welfare Section: This Section will be working under a qualified specialist, having experience in advocacy projects. This section will be responsible for bringing youths’ together and carryout special activities with them. The specialist is responsible to keep a close eye on youth’s related events on districts and provincial level. The section will be the backbone of the project and work closely with youths in the project area.
Monitoring Section: This section will be working under the supervision of an experienced monitoring specialist. The section will be responsible for creating indicators and milestones for every task in consultation with the relevant section. The project performance will be measured in via professionally developed tools. The information collected on tools will be regularly posted and analysis reports will be created. Any deviation will be directly reported to the Project Manager.
Administration: This section will be responsible for making all the procurement, transportation, contracting with services, equipment and fixtures providers. The section will also provide security cover to the field teams and make communication with all the staff and sub offices. An Accountant will be hired in this section for making maintaining the accounts under the supervision of Implementing NGO main office’s Accounts and Finance sections.
Beneficiaries Youth in general
Institutional Partners
Governmental Institutions, CSOs, and youth organizations, and other organized bodies will be brought under a network. This network will be transformed into an organized forum, where youth will be given priority.
A database of these organized entities will be created and updated on regular basis. This database will be consisted of the information about various expertise, personnel and contacts of these organizations. This database will be available in our main office and any endeavour will be helped to launch for the betterment of youths and communities.
Additionally, the potential stockholders of the project are districts governor’s office, DDCs, CDCs, CSOs, MoE, and directorate of women affairs. The role of each one is as follow
- District governor office: facilitate the project implementation and coordination with local authorities in district level, providing space for youth’s activities.
- DDCs: facilitate the beneficiaries’ identification and selection, paving the way for youths to participate in their meetings, serves as a tool for linking youths with local authorities in the field level.
- CDCs: facilitate the beneficiaries’ identification and selection, paving the way for youths to participate in their meetings for addressing problems, decision making and so on.
- Provincial Directorate of MoE: facilitate preparing the materials for literacy courses and awarding certificate for graduates of the courses.
- Directorate of women affairs: facilitate female beneficiaries’ selection, and support in preparing gender awareness session materials.
- CSO: coordinate our programs with different youth networks and help us for better implementation of the program in targeted areas.
Project Duration (months) 12
- Timeframe:
- Implementing Organization plans to implement this project in the course one year. From the time the project awards to this organization, Implementing NGO will start program mobilisation in Faizabad district and other districts of Badakhshan Province. Implementing NGO will establish its office in the field and start recruitment of staff from the region. During staff recruitment we will try our best to hire some professional people from youth generation of the province. The first phase of the project will take two months. After that, we plan to start our activities in the capital and districts of badakhshan which will continue for 800 months. During this time we will have different activities for youth generation of the province and enhance their capacity and skills by implementing different activities. The last phase of the project will be for completion, final reports, and result assessment of the project. Implementing NGO will mobilize initial activities from it ongoing projects and will coordinate the program with governmental institutions.
Overall budget: (US$) xxxx
Monitoring, Reporting and Evaluation:
Using two approaches will be done for project monitoring. Firstly by using Implementing NGO monitoring mechanisms, which is a computerized system, named PMIS (project management information system) that enable staff to follow the progress of project activities, record achievement and see the expenditure according to the project plan.
Secondly, the project monitor at field office level will do periodic monitoring of the project by site visits and interviews with beneficiaries.
Soon after approval of the project, M&E officer will design the monitoring system for the project. At the start of project the monitoring and evaluation plan will be developed with all the formats, guides and procedures. The staff will be given training on how to implement monitoring of the project. The monitoring data will be collected through site visits and direct interviews with beneficiaries and stockholders, and processed regularly.
M&E officer will conduct one monitoring mission every month. The Implementing NGO project management team will also monitor the project in a participatory way on monthly basis. Participatory means that the data will be collected through direct interviews and discussion with people and Community Shuras/ Farmers. At the district level, a separate monitoring team consisted of two couple of trainers are existed in each project regions. These provincial monitoring teams are responsible for regular monitoring of the projects activities on weekly and monthly basis. A strong relation and communication will be maintained between Implementing NGO, and Donor Staff, written report to program officer and accordingly written feedback to the field staff is given after each monitoring mission.
In addition to the monitoring missions, at the district level, a supervision team consisted of, project manager and two social organizers will regularly supervise the performances of staff and project implementation.
Monitoring reports will be prepared and the findings will be used for improvement of the project and re-directing the project strategy, if needed.
