Youth Champions and the Youth Engage Initiative - Developing Best Practices

Mercy Corps works in more than 40 countries worldwide and hosts development-centered programming to alleviate suffering, poverty, and oppression by "helping people build secure, productive, and just communities." In 2019, Mercy Corps launched the Y-ENGAGE initiative to catalyze youth involvement within Mercy Corps. The sole facilitators of this initiative are the Youth Champions – young members of Mercy Corps Staff that work on a volunteer basis to assess their country office's current level of youth engagement and provide recommendations for new action. Since its launch, Mercy Corps has found the Y-ENGAGE initiative has been most effective in Ethiopia and Uganda. However, even in these two countries, the initiative lacks a formal framework to incentivize participation and course corrections from country-level leadership. Additionally, there is no means of measuring success for the initiative.

This aim of this Capstone project was to understand the perceived success factors of the Y-ENGAGE initiative in Uganda and Ethiopia, and enhance program infrastructure while establishing a means of measuring programmatic success. The Capstone team has conducted several meetings, focus groups, and 39 interviews with Mercy Corps leadership and Youth Champions in Uganda and Ethiopia. The findings from the team's research will provide Mercy Corps with practical recommendations to advance and institutionalize the Y-ENGAGE initiative's activities and serve as a catalyst for its expansion globally and in the two focus countries. Ultimately, the project will contribute to creating just and productive communities by promoting youth engagement and empowerment.