National Youth Advocacy Platform

NYAP advocates for higher inclusion of youths in national development programmes and government services

nyap.png
  • Email

    None

  • Phone

    None

  • Website

    None

  • Address

The National Youth Advocacy Platform (NYAP) in Uganda was founded in 2017 with support from the Community Integrated Development Initiatives (CIDI) which until today serves as the Coordination Unit located at Plot 2809 Tankhill Road, Muyenga and with funding from Caritas Denmark. The Platform’s mandate is to advocate for higher inclusion of youths in national development programmes and government services. The Theory of Change of the platform is that IF youths are organized and built capacity to identify issues affecting them, and IF youths have a collective channel of engagement, THEN youths can effectively engage their duty-bearers, hold them accountable, influence them to change policies in their favour and demand for better social services and political inclusion. NYAP was thereby built on the premise “WITH youth, BY youth, FOR youth”, placing the youth in the driving seat of the platform advocating for themselves and the entire youth generation of Uganda.

The platform has in short time managed to grow into a country-wide network of Ugandan non-state actors, CBO’s, and CSO’s using a multi-stakeholder approach by joining forces with like-minded change agents, thus representing a social movement and diverse civil society of Uganda. Apparently, NYAP has a member base of 50 organisations, thereby reaching more than 204,644 youths through members’ members (36% male; 64% female), representing a promising advocacy potential. The NYAP structure consists of a National Steering Committee and 5 regional youth chapters (one per region in Uganda), each having a committee of 5 members including at least 1 female and 1 person with disability in cognizance of the principle of “Leaving No-one Behind”. During the Annual General Meeting (AGM) representatives of the member organisations agree on the issues to pursue during the coming year and on the methodologies to apply in this regard, guided by its advocacy strategy which centres on the following prioritized advocacy issues identified by the youth themselves as rights-holders:

  • Ineffective Youth participation in leadership, planning and budgeting processes;
  • Poor Business conditions for youth entrepreneurs;
  • The mismatch of the skills set available and the development needs;
  • Inadequate promotion of agricultural education in primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions;
  • Lack of access and control to land by the youth;
  • Increased teenage pregnancies leading to high-school dropouts.