At the heart of YPPD’s programs is a theory of change which acknowledges the need for an actively empowered and ignited young generation alongside credible pathways for interaction with society and its governance system. By enabling and empowering youth as invaluable change agents, YPPD believes in enriching their experiences, creating and exploring the right opportunities to facilitate their participation, leadership and learning, as well as the right tools and voice to engage on their own issues while building an inclusive and peaceful society.

Whether it is about influencing policies or bringing capacity and access to essential services in education and health, YPPD helps to connect people and the areas where change is most likely and sure to happen. Our programs are uniquely designed to meet the growing and emerging needs of people, their structures and communities we work. These programs are crafted to reinforce and strengthen young people’s capacities, facilitate dialogues for action, provide voices so they can stand to take action and redistribute power bringing the most vulnerable groups to a forum where they can be heard, respected and incorporated into mainstream society and development.

While we currently focus on grassroots empowerment, we are beginning to incorporate civic engagement and policy advocacy into many of our programs. We do so through the establishment of innovative, collaborative platforms and channels that could connect people and their institutions of governance. In this process, we directly reduce risk factors that lead to crime. Through our crime prevention drive, we determine what primary interventions are needed in addition to identifying the key conflict drivers and stakeholders necessary for sustainable solutions. With our current conflict prevention and intervention design, as more and more young people (men and women) become engaged, they will become obvious leaders of change while becoming socially responsible and active citizens contributing to an inclusive, peaceful, and just society.

ORGANIZATIONAL EXPERIENCE AND STRATEGIC FIT

Being in operation for the past seventeen years, the organization has a team of highly skilled experiences in working with young people, navigating the policy, legislative and regulatory landscapes, as well as increasing capacity and awareness of various stakeholder groups about the issues. YPPD has been able to increase young people’s understanding of practical approaches to building functioning societies that promote peace and mutual coexistence while strengthening voices and actions that demand equity and accountability. It maintains the view that young people can be agents of positive change and works for ways to enable them to step forward for positive social transformation. It is a platform for diverse kinds of actions committed to engaging key stakeholders at different levels of development across Sierra Leone.

In its many interventions and projects, the Youth Partnership for Peace and Development has worked with partners over the period to implement a number of impact-driven projects which have today served as models to the majority of communities and partners. The project was conceived against the continued exclusion of young women and men from local dispute resolution and the national conflict prevention debate has an adverse impact not only on security and justice outcomes for young people themselves but also on Sierra Leone’s prospects for long-term stability. Highlight of these interventions include but are not limited to:

1. The recently concluded joint implementation of the Kolhat Barray Project, also dubbed as the Inclusive Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding Project – funded by the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund (UNPBF). Major milestones in this were the (i) organization of the first national Youth Conflict Prevention Summit which brought together well over 600 delegates and duty-bearers in June of 2022 (ii) the development of a Youth Leadership and Training Manual that was used to train 360 youth leaders and their groups across three districts; (iii) delivery of the Kolhat Barray Small Grant as a subgranting process to enable 21 youth-led organizations implement their peacebuilding and conflict preventions solutions and (iv) a number of training and capacity strengthening, action learning and sharing, interface and dialogues activities at the various levels.
2. In February 2017, YPPD through funds from Cordaid and the Civil Society Platform for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding launched and popularized the United Nations Security Council Resolution on Youth Peace and Security (UNSCR2250) for the first time in Sierra Leone and attracted agencies such as the United Nations Development Program, Office of National Security, National Youth Commission, The Ministry of Youth Affairs, various non-governmental and youth-led/serving institutions, political party representatives and other the security sector.
3. In the lead-up to the 2018 national elections, YPPD implemented the Youth Democracy and Governance project where it delivered targeted training and education to over 150,000 first-time voters and conducted district-level political party youth dialogues, including the signing of manifestos from the various political party aspirants in all of Sierra Leone’s 16 districts. We also trained youth groups on the African Charter on Democracy, Governance and Elections in addition to basic electoral cycles and violence prevention.
4. In June 2021, YPPD led the University of St. Andrews UK-funded project on “Addressing Health and Development Drivers through Cross-Border Youth Engagement: Social Cohesion, Sustainability, and Well-Being in the Mano River Basin.” It worked with the Advocacy Movement Network (AMNet) to deliver targeted interventions in the project.

Key Funding and Strategic Partners YPPD has worked with:

• The United Nations Peacebuilding Fund
• Cordaid/Civil Society Platform for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding
• United Nations Development Programme
• United Nations Programme on Human Settlements
• University of Saint Andrews UK
• Civil Society Platform for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding
• CIVICUS World Alliance for Citizen participation
• Save the Children UK
• World Health organization/PMNCH
• AmRef Health – Youth In Action (YACT)
• Trocaire – Irish Civil Society Partnership