Aiming High: 10 Strategies for Meaningful Youth Engagement

Young people aged 15–24 account for 40% of new HIV infections globally. Cultural expectations of ‘appropriate’ behavior and norms around discussing sexuality often make access to integrated HIV and sexual and reproductive health and rights services difficult for young people.

Compounded by stigma and discrimination, imbalanced power dynamics, gender inequality and lack of confidentiality, young people living with and affected by HIV are particularly likely to be excluded from SRHR programming and policy.

Based on principles and recommendations surfaced by Link Up youth advocates, Aiming High provides practical guidance and examples for shifting the position of young people in the HIV response from being service recipients, to becoming leaders, researchers, advocates, mentors, implementers, educators and providers in other words to support young people to be the change they want to see.
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This brief provides practical guidelines for meaningful youth engagement for the use of programmers, policymakers, civil society and others who wish to work with young people in an inclusive and equitable way. The resource also includes examples of how the 10 strategies can be applied in five areas of meaningful youth engagement in SRHR and HIV integration. These can be adapted and applied to any level of decision-making and programming.

The briefing paper—also available in French—is accompanied by an Aiming High Scorecard which can be used by young people and other stakeholders to assess how well programmes and organizations are implementing meaningful youth engagement, based on Link Up’s Top Ten Strategies. 

PHI’s Global Youth Coalition on HIV/AIDS (GYCA) is an implementing partner of Link Up, an ambitious, five country project that aims to improve the sexual and reproductive health and rights of more than one million young people living with and affected by HIV. GYCA elevates the voices of young people who are living with an affected by HIV as they call for full access to HIV information, prevention tools, treatment, and support, and their full sexual and reproductive health and rights.

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