Youth Consortium: Youth Networks Working Together

The Youth-CONSORTIUM is a collaboration between two international youth-led networks – Youth LEAD and Y-PEER. These networks serve the young key populations affected by HIV, including young sex workers, people who use drugs, MSM, transgender and people living with HIV. Youth-LEAD primarily works to address HIV and other health needs of YKP, whilst Y-PEER advocates for broader sexual and reproductive health and rights. The Youth-Consortium is Asia/Pacific based and provides small grants, capacity development, technical support and advocacy.

 

 

Youth-LEAD and Y-PEER began their partnership in 2014 as a way of strengthening their respective networks – improving Youth-LEAD’s work on sexual and reproductive health and rights, while integrating attention to KPs and HIV in Y-PEER’s work. Youth-LEAD received a one-year individual network grant from RCF in 2013, a joint grant with the HIV Young Leaders’ Fund in 2014-2015 and has since received three years of joint funding with Y-PEER.

The core funding support for Youth-LEAD and Y-PEER provided by the RCF has a multiplying role. Both organizations can take their place on regional advisory and advocacy bodies, and can attract important project funding from a range of organizations. Such funding can assist them in advancing their goals, to ensure that the barriers that young people face in attaining their sexual and reproductive health rights are reduced.

For Youth-LEAD this core support has facilitated its work in developing the first ever Youth Key Populations (YKP) Implementation Toolkit in the Asia Pacific Region. As new HIV infections amongst YKPs increased in the region, developing an implementation toolkit was crucial to support the development of programmes and interventions addressing the needs and issues of YKPs.  The toolkit is just one out of many other initiatives in the region. The toolkit is based on the existing KP implementation toolkits that emerged from the WHO Consolidated Guidelines on HIV prevention and care for key populations. Developing the toolkit consisted of a systematic literature review by four consultants, two regional consultations with diverse stakeholders, three in-country research studies, one regional survey and collection of numerous existing promising practices on YKP in the region. The process also garnered funding from diverse stakeholders such as UNFPA APRO, the Global Fund and UNICEF EAPRO. All these would not have been possible without core funding from the RCF.

For Youth-CONSORTIUM, there has been work on a regional formative assessment of the needs of adolescents and young people at risk of HIV in collaboration with UNICEF EAPRO.

Core funding has also meant that both Youth-LEAD and Y-PEER have been able to provide consistent leadership in the Asia Pacific Interagency Task Team (IATT) – an important regional initiative and partnership between YKP, UN and civil society that works to improve the attention to YKP needs and issues by fostering collaboration, advocacy and technical assistance. Under this initiative, Y-PEER led the development of the first IATT e-course on YKP and sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Stable funding for these two important youth-led networks has led to more consistent representation of youth HIV and SRH issues in the Asia pacific Region. This is essential in a region where young people are disproportionately affected by HIV. Supporting this consortium has also provided an opportunity for these two networks to learn from each other, and to strengthen their skills, capacity and breadth of work, so that they can better support the essential work of their member organizations.