Interagency Youth Working Group

February 8, 2007

Mahua Mandal, Shanti Conly, and Diana Pietro, USAID

Bill Finger, Tonya Nyagiro, and Mercedes Torres, FHI

Gael O’Sullivan, PSP-One

Catharine McKaig, ACCESS/FP Project (JHPIEGO)

Nancy Murray, Jim Rosen, Sarah Gillespie, and Laura Gentile Harwig, Constella Futures

Cate Lane, ESD/Pathfinder

Erica Nybro and Monica Kothari, MEASURE DHS

Peggy D’Adamo and Stephen Goldstein, JHU/INFO

Ilene Speizer, MEASURE Evaluation

Aysa Saleh-Ramirez, Institute for Reproductive Health/Georgetown

 

This was the second meeting of the organizations funded by the USAID Youth Global Leadership Priority (GLP) funds. This group agreed to call themselves the Youth GLP “Partners.” Participants briefly summarized the status of their Youth GLP project and any other major youth projects in their organizations. The meeting then had these sections:

·        Overview of three Web sites funded by Youth GLP

·        Summary of two new methodologies for youth funded by Youth GLP

·        Discussion of a open spring meeting in Washington to be sponsored by the IYWG

·        Summary of the FHI utilization meeting of YouthNet tools (a GLP-funded activity)

·        Overview of the IYWG Partners structure and future meetings anticipated

·        Discussion of topics for the YouthLens publication series

 

USAID has funded three new or expanded Web sites related to youth RH/HIV prevention. All of them gave a brief update and Partners provided ideas for improvements and collaboration among the three.

·        INFO/Johns Hopkins University and FHI staff gave an update on the new IYWG Web site, which will be launched on a limited basis at the large spring meeting

·        Constella/Futures staff provided an update on the expansion of the youth-policy.com site, developed initially with YouthNet

·        MEASURE DHS staff showed the newly live DHS Youth corner and discussed how they are adding more data.

All agreed that the three sites should work together where possible, such as marketing and easy links to each other.

 

Staff from two of the GLP-funded projects gave short presentations and led a discussion about methodological issues.

·        Aysa Saleh-Ramirez of the Institute for Reproductive Health described the research methods and approaches they are taking in a two-part project working with youth ages 10-14, on education and skills building, in Madagascar and a Central American country to be decided.

·        Ilene Speizer of MEASURE Evaluation described the methods they have used in adapting the PLACE methodology to youth reproductive health risks in a Haiti project. Slides from this presentation are available.

 

The group discussed a draft agenda, including the objectives for a large meeting sponsored by the IYWG. There were many ideas for topics, approaches to the meeting, and keynote themes. All agreed that there needed to be plenty of time for discussion of ideas, not just listening to PowerPoint presentations. USAID and FHI recorded the ideas and agreed to reshape the agenda to achieve as many of the expressed goals as possible. The group agreed on the tentative date of April 25 for the meeting.

 

FHI staff summarized plans for a half-day meeting following the full-day spring meeting. This GLP-funded activity would encourage a smaller group of participants to utilize key YouthNet tools that were produced in the last year of that project.

 

The group agreed to call the Youth GLP-funded organizations “Partners.” The overall plan is for the Partners to meet every other quarter. Between the Partners meetings, the IYWG would hold larger, open meetings, with the first one occurring in the spring of 2007. Other smaller technical meetings might also occur.