Details of CIVICUS Youth Action Lab<\/strong><\/h2>\nThe Youth Action Lab is a one-year co-creation lab for grassroots youth activists based in the global south which works to support their movements to become more resilient and sustainable in their pursuit of a more equitable world. The Lab is an innovative, safe, active, inclusive, collective, representative and connected space, online and physical for grassroots activists, which thoughtfully considers diverse contexts and ecosystems to better resource them to flourish with their communities.<\/p>\n
Participants in the Lab work to build political solidarity and networks, strengthen capacities in engaging with policy processes, and access resources to support their movement. The Lab will act as a hub for testing new ways of working within civil society and mobilizing learnings from across sectors in support of youth-led movements<\/p>\n
The Youth Action Lab\u00a0<\/strong>is a pilot project supported by the\u00a0Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad).\u00a0This initiative is part of\u00a0CIVICUS Youth\u00a0and\u00a0Civil Society Resourcing\u00a0workstreams to build a more resilient, effective, safe and diverse civil society in the 21st Century<\/p>\nThe Challenge<\/h2>\n
Young people are facing increasing barriers and threats to their activism. Youth-led movements are unable to access sustainable resourcing, lack the technical capacity and networks to engage with political systems, and continue to work in silos, separated from other movements and activists across geographies, movements, and causes.<\/p>\n
Often times, these barriers and existing hierarchies in civil society often position youth as foot soldiers and not as change agents. Through extensive research and consultation with stakeholders, CIVICUS has come to understand that designing an alternative resourcing mechanism that centers meaningful youth participation is imperative to achieve a sustainable, resilient, and inclusive civil society.<\/p>\n
Our solution to the aforementioned problems is launching a Youth Action Lab, an experimentation lab for ten young activists based in the Global South (Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan\u00a0Africa, Asia, and the Pacific) that would support them in being more sustainable and resilient in their activism.<\/p>\n