International Youth Alliance and Family Planning

Covid-19 Youth Task Force

Location: Global (40+ countries represented)

This project began as a weekly peer support series for youth to have space for sharing mental health concerns, personal safety concerns, and issues they are experiencing around access to healthcare. The series was popular and attendees mobilized a COVID-19 Youth Taskforce that is now organizing online. It includes 50+ youth from an array of different countries that are organizing community-level initiatives to address the concerns they raised and bring youth activists together to close gaps in mental health support, community support, and service provision.

Currently, taskforce members in Pakistan and DRC have implemented community campaigns to share youth-friendly COVID-19 guidance, information, and counselling for young people in their area. The taskforce is partnering with Jhpiego, CitiesRISE, and Engenderhealth to connect youth in each country represented in the network with resources and technical assistance to scale SRH specific solutions to address priorities for youth.

Support

We anticipate that our efforts to continue mobilizing youth advocacy and civic engagement throughout the COVID-19 period will require technical support, digital technology, and human centred design assistance to build platforms to assist with peer-led support, digital mobilization, and telehealth for youth fearing violence and safety risks within their own homes. We have the network to facilitate design and delivery of these solutions to at-risk youth across the 40 countries represented in our taskforce - we just need the assistance and funds to do so.

Other needs: Volunteers, Space for online meetings

See more: www.iyafp.org

For more information contact covid19@unmgcy.org