Enabling Global Youth to Create Large-Scale Change Through Leadership Development, Technology, Innovation, and Advocacy

Youth Champions Initiative (YCI), a program of PHI's Rise Up, builds powerful young leaders who are leading the sexual and reproductive health and rights movement across the globe.

In 2014, Youth Champions participated in the 50th Anniversary Incubator in Los Altos, California, USA. This intensive workshop integrated hands on capacity building in the areas of sexual and reproductive health and rights, leadership, innovation, and project development. The Incubator provided the Youth Champions with the opportunity to strengthen their skills and leadership capacity, learn from internationally recognized SRHR experts, develop their own SRHR projects, and share their vision for SRHR with the Packard Foundation staff. YCI also provides on-going technical assistance to enable the Youth Champions and their organizations to most effectively implement their innovative SRHR projects.

YCI made a difference in Ethiopia, India, Pakistan, and the US South. Monitoring and evaluation demonstrated that the Youth Champions significantly strengthened their leadership, and that their innovative projects improved SRHR in their communities:

• Leveraging WhatsApp in India to deliver youth-friendly mobile instant messaging on SRH

• Developing an animated television series in Ethiopia about girl super heroines fighting for girls’ health and rights

• Creating comic books in Pakistan to deliver healthy menstrual hygiene information to girls and their families

• Teaching youth in the United States to use art, dance, and spoken word poetry to advocate for comprehensive sexuality education