Organisational and Strategic Capacity Strengthening for Youth-Led Organizations

Short summary

As a youth-led organization (YLO), CHOICE strengthens the capacity of other YLOs to become strong and sustainable organizations, using our own experiences and specially developed tools. 

What capacity strengthening support can we provide on this topic?

Youth-led organizations (YLOs) often face unique challenges such as high-turnover rates, a lack of formal organizational and financial structures, difficulty obtaining funding, low staff capacity etc.; which can impact the functioning and sustainability of the organization. In programs like RHRN2, these challenges can also lead to power imbalances or situations whereby YLOs receive less funding to implement activities and are not able to partake as equal partners. As a youth-led organization ourselves, CHOICE is uniquely placed to strengthen the capacity of YLOs to become strong and sustainable organizations, using our own experiences and specially developed tools. In fact, an independent evaluation of our Youth Leadership Program found that our technical assistance was the most valued method of support to our youth-led partner organizations. Finally, we envision this type of capacity strengthening as an exchange between partners or peer-to-peer support – we learn a lot by working with other YLOs!

What could the CS look like? 

CHOICE has developed a youth-friendly Organizational Capacity Assessment (OCA) especially designed for youth-led organizations. The OCA can be the starting point of a more long-term trajectory, through which we will jointly find out what organizational capacity strengthening will take YLOs to the next level. This includes workshops that can be provided as the next step after an OCA or just needs based. The workshops can happen on and off line and include topics like: strategic planning, fundraising and Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (PMEL).

Rough Timeline Organizational Capacity Assessment: 2 months and 3 weeks 

What tools are available?

Aside from the technical assistance that we can provide to youth-led partners, CHOICE has several documents that can be shared widely:

●   Youth-friendly Organizational Capacity Assessments (OCAs) –  designed especially for YLOs

●   Youth-led Organizations and SRHR – A step-by-step guide for YLOs working on SRHR (EN). 

●   Strategic Planning Workshop for YLOs 

●   Youth-Friendly guideline for working with Theory of Change (EN). 

●   Investing in Youth Impact: a toolkit on fundraising for youth-led organizations (EN, FR). 

What languages can this CS support be provided in?

English, and French