Prime Implementer

International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX)

Implementing Partners

Consortium Partners:

Project Timeline

October 2020 – September 2025

Project Goals

Diverse youth create and lead data-informed, inclusive youth development at local, national, and global levels.
Youth-led and youth-serving programs strengthen their ability to gather and use evidence about their programs to strengthen and expand their impact.
Youth disseminate learning from their implementation research efforts so that the evidence can inform programs and policies.
Youth and adults use data as an inclusive intergenerational language to collaborate and inform decision-making.
Youth-led networks and place-based networks facilitate collaboration between key development stakeholders, including public, private, and civil society actors, to expand development impact.

Brief Background

In today’s digitally linked global landscape, many of the world’s 1.8 billion young people are addressing the world’s complex challenges through direct action, social movements, and networks, initiating dialogue and action to promote social justice. However, many youth still lack pathways to education, economic and civic engagement, access to health and mental health information and services, and opportunities to lead change. Youth who are leading change are often not taken seriously by decision-makers. COVID-19 has exacerbated distrust between youth and institutions, increased polarization and digital divides, multiplied dis- and misinformation, and increased exclusion and structural violence toward girls and women, minorities, and people with disabilities. Youth-led and youth-serving organizations lack resources and capacity to provide impactful services to young people across all sectors; and the development sector lacks sufficient information on what works in positive youth development programs, especially generated by young people.

Youth Excel is a global program that will empower young people and youth organizations to use implementation research to strengthen local, national, and global development solutions.

Implementation research is a mixed-methods approach to collecting data during program implementation to improve implementation. Implementation research helps teams learn how to adapt tested programs to new contexts, how to scale and achieve cost-effectiveness, and how to strengthen impact.

Click here to read the Youth Excel fact sheet.

Overview of Activities

Create a toolkit for implementation research: Develop an open-source, gender-responsive toolkit for conducting implementation research about positive youth development.
Support youth organizations and networks: Support youth-led and youth-serving organizations, and youth-led, issue-based collaborative networks to address local development issues through implementation research.
Strengthen skills: Build youth’s skills in digital leadership, data leadership, and advocacy.
Be inclusive: Prioritize gender and social inclusion and use power equity tools to ensure that every activity is inclusive.
Support implementation research: Strengthen networks of youth researchers to support implementation research activities.
Strengthen intergenerational partnerships: Work through issue-based collaborative networks and data summits to facilitate dialogue between youth and adults.
Engage the public and private sectors: Build partnerships to support youth-led data and learning.
Promote research: Synthesize and disseminate youth’s evidence and learning.
Support advocacy: Leverage youth-led research and adults’ support to influence development agendas and policies.

Expected Results

Youth Excel will support young leaders and youth-led and youth-serving organizations around the globe to conduct quality Research-to-Change or implementation research; use data and learnings to improve their own cross-sectoral, positive youth development programs; synthesize data and learning; and engage in intergenerational dialogue with adult decision-makers so that together youth and adults can shape and advance data-informed development policies, agendas, and programs.

Project Materials

Economic Inclusion and Exclusion: Identities, Opportunities, and Barriers
A meta-synthesis of localized and universal lessons learned from youth-led research on youth economic opportunities in Kenya, Guatemala, and the DRC.
Youth Protection in Youth Excel
A description of Youth Excel's comprehensive approach to youth protection.
“Siewe, The Period Angel” – How Youth Excel Partners Use Research-to-Change to Strengthen Systems So That Girls Can Stay in School
AYM/VIAC reached over one thousand adolescents through peer education using comic books in all targeted schools and over 3000 adolescents through their program.
Youth Excel East and Southern Africa Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Data Summit
Learn more about the work of AfyAfrika (Kenya), Thrive Gulu (Uganda), Grassroot Soccer Zambia (Zambia) and Rock of Hope (Eswatini).
Youth Excel Cambodia: Learnings about Inclusive Youth Engagement
Materials from a 2023 Intergenerational Dialogue Event about Intersectional Rapid Gender and Protection Analysis (IRGPA) and the Youth Sector Mapping Analysis.
Youth Excel Learning Brief: Locally Led Implementation Research on School-based Menstrual Health and Hygiene Support
This Learning Brief provides an interim summary of five Youth Excel grantees’ work in strengthening menstrual health and hygiene support for girls’ education in Malawi and Zambia.
About the Menstrual Health and Hygiene Grant Competition
Includes knowledge products that reflect key learnings from implementation research on school-based menstrual health and hygiene management activities.
+Fuertes +Valientes (Spanish)
Un producto de conocimiento innovador de la investigación para el cambio realizada en el marco del Programa Youth Excel. en la cual participaron niñas y jóvenes de entre los 14 y 24 años después de vivir el confinamiento por pandemia del Covid 19.
ICON Guatemala Promoting Women Economic Empowerment (Spanish)
Knowledge products produced by the ICON Quetzaltenango around Economic empowerment of indigenous women, Preventing Gender Based Violence (GBV), and Local economic development

Contact

General inquiries: excelyouth@irex.org

Primary contact: Sally Bisharat sbisharat @irex.org

Secondary contact: Hamza Arsbi hamza.arsbi@gmail.com

Rachel Surkin (U.s) – Consortium Lead

Silvya Kananu (Kenya) – Project Lead

Hafez Neeno (Jordan) – Regional Lead and Capacity Development Senior Advisor

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