Introducing the YIELD Hub Youth Reference Group
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YIELD Hub is launching its Youth Reference Group, a new structure that gives young people from across the adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health and rights (AYSRHR) field a formal role in shaping our organisation’s direction, and a mechanism to hold it accountable.
The Group brings together a diverse body of young people with lived experience and technical expertise from across the AYSRHR field. Many members have already worked alongside YIELD Hub through its Action Learning programmes, contributing to research, shaping projects and challenging the organisation’s thinking long before the Group had a name. What is new is the structure: a formal channel through which that influence continues, and grows.
Why now
Youth engagement in global health and development often follows a familiar shape. An organisation convenes a group of young people, gathers their input, and proceeds much as it would have anyway. The group ends up as evidence that consultation happened, rather than a source of real consequence.
YIELD Hub is strengthening its Youth Reference Group because it does not consider itself exempt from that pattern. The Group is designed to sit differently: members are not asked to react to decisions already made. They shape programmes and priorities from the outset, and they are given visibility into the reasoning behind YIELD Hub’s choices, the condition under which real accountability becomes possible.
This matters more given the current funding and political climate. Adolescent and Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (AYSRHR) funding is contracting, and civic space for young people is narrowing across many of the contexts where YIELD Hub’s partners work. Under that pressure, the instinct for many organisations is to consult less and move faster. YIELD Hub is taking the opposite approach, on the basis that scarcity is exactly when organisations most need people willing to ask whether their priorities still reflect the realities they claim to serve.
What the Group is already doing
The Group’s remit is substantive rather than symbolic. Members are contributing to the youth-facing workstream and to the Mapping Youth Power Theory of Change, as well as the youth-centric Values Assessment; a unique initiatives that falls under efforts to integrate youth work and participation into monitoring and evaluation, with further opportunities opening up across the YIELD Hub’s wider Action Learning community. The distinction between symbolic and strategic engagement isn’t a matter of language: it is a matter of whether young people are given work that carries institutional weight.
In our team’s words
Alex Sampaio-Cook, who coordinates the Youth Reference Group at YIELD Hub, said:
“The Youth Reference Group is an exciting new initiative for YIELD Hub, marking an important step in strengthening youth leadership and influence across our work. Its members bring an incredible range of expertise, lived experience and perspectives from across the AYSRHR field, which will help shape our programmes and keep us accountable and responsive to the constantly evolving priorities of young people around the world. Just as importantly, we want the Group to be a space for mutual learning, connection and growth, supporting members to deepen their knowledge and continue developing as leaders within the field.”
Richard Mawutor Dzikunu, Co-Director of YIELD Hub:
“This is not about bringing young people into a room simply to consult them, validate decisions we have already made, or tick a box around youth participation. Many of the young people in this group have already been part of YIELD Hub’s journey: they have contributed to our Action Learning work, shaped programmes, challenged our thinking and helped shape the Hub into what it is today. What we are doing now is formalising that relationship.
“We ask the organisations, funders and INGOs we work with to think differently about youth partnership, to move beyond consultation towards meaningful influence and shared power. We have to hold ourselves to that same standard. This is not about having young people at the table for the sake of representation. It is about recognising young people as partners who have already helped shape YIELD Hub, and giving them a more formal role in shaping where we go next.”
Sonali Silva, Co-Director of YIELD Hub:
“What has struck us most in working with these members is the gravity and depth they bring: not only expertise, but a demanding clarity about what real partnership requires. They have asked us harder questions than we asked ourselves. That is uncomfortable in the way that useful things often are, and it is exactly why we wanted them.
“We are proud to introduce this Group to our community. Their accountability is not a constraint on our work. It is the condition of doing it well.”
Meet the members of the Youth Reference Group
Learn more about our members, joining us from multiple regions with their diverse backgrounds. We will share updates on the work of the Youth Reference Group on our social media accounts on Instagram and LinkedIn.
