Understanding Youth Participation in Development

Assignment Task

The Youth Working Group of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and UK Civil Society Organisations (CSO) developed the three-lens approach to youth participation aiming to foster the active, informed and voluntary involvement of young people in decision-making and the life of their communities both locally and globally:

The three-lens approach advocates that development assistance should work for the benefit of youth (as target beneficiaries), with youth as partners, and be shaped by youth as leaders. This is an assets ap- proach to youth participation in development.

• It is important for institutions and practitioners to consider all three lenses; they are not mutually exclusive. Youth participation in development is often a combination of all three.
• This approach is dynamic: depending on the local context and the development intervention one particular lens may be more appropriate or have more prominence/focus.
• The different lenses may be used with different groups of young people during an intervention/ initiative, i.e., young leaders may be reaching out to new groups of young people as targets.
• It might appear that youth participation is just about young partners or leaders, and not young ben- eficiaries. However, participation must also develop from a foundational base.
• The ultimate aim is to develop youth as partners and leaders in development. This is based on youth having agency: their capacity to act, their skills and capabilities and their ability to change their own lives.

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