Publication:
Community Foundations : A Tool for Engaging Youth in Community Driven Development

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Files in English
English PDF (400.27 KB)
481 downloads
English Text (26.8 KB)
41 downloads
Published
2007-10
ISSN
Date
2012-08-13
Editor(s)
Abstract
Community Driven Development (CDD) approaches present an effective means to involve young people in local development decision-making, giving them voice and influencing power, with benefits for themselves and their communities. This note highlights a range of key learning points emerging from years of international experience with youth banks, and youth advisory committees, an innovative tool for engaging youth in their communities. Community foundations hosting, youth advisory committees, or youth banks see youth in the community as a resource to be tapped into, not a problem to be solved. They see the best way for utilizing the energy and creativity of young people in giving them a large share of responsibility for the identification of youth needs and opportunities for youth engagement, selection of priority projects, grant making, implementation of projects, their monitoring as well as raising funds needed for the work.
Link to Data Set
Citation
Mesik, Juraj; Ringland, Vernon. 2007. Community Foundations : A Tool for Engaging Youth in Community Driven Development. Social Development Notes; no. 110. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/11161 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Report Series
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Publication
    Engaging Youth through Community-Driven Development Objectives : Experiences, Findings, and Opportunities
    (World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-07) Adam, Sarah G.; Kaori Oshima
    Community-driven development (CDD) is an approach emphasizing local control over planning and an investment resource offers important advantages for engaging young people. The World Bank's portfolio of CDD projects provides a rich repository of experiences of how this approach is being adapted to enhance the inclusion of young people. This paper synthesizes the findings of a global stocktaking on CDD and youth. The study draws from a universe of over 60 active, planned, or recently closed CDD youth projects across all regions in which the Bank operates. Significant diversity exists among these projects in terms of the extent of youth focus; size, scale, and scope; contexts and conditions to which they respond; and objectives and desired outcomes. Youth engagement is examined through three interlinked dimensions of youth development: (1) endowments or the accumulation of human capital assets; (2) employment and economic opportunities; and (3) empowerment, encompassing the concepts of participation, voice, and agency. The framework links each dimension to a domain of inclusion services, markets, and spaces within which individuals and groups take part in society. The stocktake reveals that CDD projects are contributing in significant and innovative ways to the youth development agenda in all three spheres, and offers reflections and opportunities for each dimension.
  • Publication
    Participatory and Community-Driven Development in Urban Areas
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-06-29) World Bank Group
    This paper aims to contribute to learning on community engagement and community driven development (CDD) in urban areas. Specifically, the review describes the World Bank’s use of participatory and CDD approaches in urban areas between 2003 and 2013; identifies the challenges of using participatory and CDD approaches in the urban context; assesses lessons from the application of CDD in urban areas through case studies; and makes recommendations for a way forward in terms of operational approaches and further research to improve the application of CDD in cities. In conducting the study, the team engaged colleagues from social and urban development, and other relevant sectors in order to leverage cross-sectoral collaboration. The paper aims to provide a useful starting point for dialogue and collaboration to contribute to sustainable and inclusive cities. The findings of the review are targeted to task team leaders and national and local government officials who are interested in initiating, expanding, or scaling up projects with a participatory approach in urban areas.
  • Publication
    Challenging Generations : Youths and Elders in Rural and Peri-Urban Sierra Leone
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-01) Manning, Ryann Elizabeth
    This paper takes a detailed look at the relationship today between elders and youths in rural and peri-urban Sierra Leone, and on how that relationship might have changed during and after the country's civil war of the 1990s. It focuses largely, though not exclusively, on political institutions. The main source of data is in-depth qualitative research conducted in 2006-2007 by the World Bank's justice for the poor and understanding processes of change in local governance project, though the paper also draws on other recent research efforts and select literature. The first section of the paper reviews the research methodology. The second section discusses different understandings of the term 'youth,' which sometimes cause confusion and contribute to misdirected policy efforts. The next sections review specific findings, followed by conclusions and recommendations for governmental and nongovernmental actors. The author hopes this information will be helpful to readers involved in efforts to empower youths or reform local governance and justice, as well as those interested more generally in avoiding the political and social conditions that helped drive the civil war.
  • Publication
    Youth in the Maldives : Shaping a New Future for Young Women and Men through Engagement and Empowerment
    (Washington, DC, 2014-10-03) World Bank
    This report responds to the growing concern over issues facing Maldivian youth today, and specifically, to a request made by the Ministry of Youth and Sports to examine the status of youth in the Maldives. Such concerns are certainly warranted, particularly in light of a regional youth bulge which is taking place in South Asia, as well as an observed increase in at risk behavior such as youth drug use and membership in gangs. While a number of studies have sought to examine youth issues in the Maldives, a comprehensive and holistic assessment is lacking. This report was aimed at helping to fill this knowledge gap. This report examines issues affecting young people in the Maldives as they transition from adolescence to adulthood, and based on this analysis and a review of international good practice, recommends a number of actions for the Government s consideration. The analysis focused on youth experiences as they pertain to: health, education, labor, family structure, gangs and violence, and civic engagement and participation. A youth development framework, based on public health literature and adapted to the Maldives, serves as the organizing structure of the report. The report draws on original data collection and analysis, as well as an extensive review of existing literature. With regard to data collection, the study involved field-based research including a household survey and in-depth interviews, and focus-group discussions with youth and stakeholders in the Maldives.
  • Publication
    Rethinking Youth, Livelihoods, and Fragility in West Africa
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015) Fortune, Francis; Ismail, Olawale; Stephen, Monica
    Africa’s population is young and growing at twice the pace of other continents. A youth bulge presents a series of development policy opportunities and challenges. In this context, simplistic linkages between the youth bulge, high unemployment, and fragility have gained traction and given rise to a youth policy agenda that targets urban male youth as the problem and emphasizes formal sector development as the solution. This paper questions some of the core assumptions that underpin mainstream perceptions of the linkages between youth, employment, and fragility in West Africa, and presents an alternative analysis. The study will use the language of livelihoods to reflect on youth employment experiences, as livelihoods take into account the capabilities, assets (including both material and social resources), and activities required for a means of living beyond traditional ideas of employment, and thus enable a deeper, more sophisticated understanding of the realities of many young West Africans. The paper argues that a nuanced understanding of specific groups of young people and their livelihood activities in their specific social, cultural, political, and economic context is necessary to understand how young peoples’ lives intersect with fragility dynamics. The paper aims to highlight that the relationship between youth, unemployment, underemployment, livelihoods, and fragility is far more complex than is often recognized and should not be exaggerated or taken out of context.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

  • Publication
    Electricity Access in Sub-Saharan Africa
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019-03-08) Blimpo, Moussa P.; Cosgrove-Davies, Malcolm
    Access to reliable electricity is a prerequisite for the economic transformation of economies in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), especially in a digital age. Yet the electricity access rate in the region is often substantially low, households and businesses with access often face unreliable service, and the cost of the service is often among the highest in the world. This situation imposes substantial constraints on economic activities, provision of public services, adoption of new technologies, and quality of life. Much of the focus on how to best provide reliable, affordable, and sustainable electricity service to all has been on mitigating supply-side constraints. However, demand-side constraints may be as important, if not more important. On the supply side, inadequate investments in maintenance result in high technical losses; most state-owned utilities operate at a loss; and power trade, which could significantly lower the cost of electricity, is underdeveloped. On the demand side, the uptake and willingness to pay are often low in many communities, and the consumption levels of those who are connected are limited. Increased uptake and consumption of electricity will encourage investment to improve service reliability and close the access gap. Electricity Access in Sub-Saharan Africa shows that the fundamental problem is poverty and lack of economic opportunities rather than power. The solution lies in understanding that the overarching reasons for the unrealized potential involve tightly intertwined technical, financial, political, and geographic factors. The ultimate goal is to enable households and businesses to gain access to electricity and afford its use, and utilities to recover their cost and make profits. The report makes the case that policy makers need to adopt a more comprehensive and long-term approach to electrification in the region—one centered on the productive use of electricity at affordable rates. Such an approach includes increased public and private investment in infrastructure, expanded access to credit for new businesses, improved access to markets, and additional skills development to translate the potential of expanded and reliable electricity access into substantial economic impact. Enhancing the economic capabilities of communities is the best way to achieve faster and more sustainable development progress while addressing the broad challenges of affordability, low consumption, and financial viability of utilities, as well as ensuring equitable provision between urban and rural areas.
  • Publication
    Global Economic Prospects, January 2025
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16) World Bank
    Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.
  • Publication
    The Impact of Climate Change on Education and What to Do about It
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-05-02) Venegas Marin, Sergio; Schwarz, Lara; Sabarwal, Shwetlena
    Education can be the key to ending poverty in a livable planet, but governments must act now to protect it. Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as cyclones, floods, droughts, heatwaves and wildfires. These extreme weather events are in turn disrupting schooling; precipitating learning losses, dropouts, and long-term impacts. Even if the most drastic climate mitigation strategies were implemented, extreme weather events will continue to have detrimental impacts on education outcomes.
  • Publication
    Is There a Case for Industrial Policy? A Critical Survey
    (Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2006-07-22) Pack, Howard; Saggi, Kamal
    What are the underlying rationales for industrial policy? Does empirical evidence support the use of industrial policy for correcting market failures that plague the process of industrialization? This article addresses these questions through a critical survey of the analytical literature on industrial policy. It also reviews some recent industry successes and argues that public interventions have played only a limited role. Moreover, the recent ascendance and dominance of international production networks in the sectors in which developing countries once had considerable success implies a further limitation on the potential role of industrial policies as traditionally understood. Overall, there appears to be little empirical support for an activist government policy even though market failures exist that can, in principle, justify the use of industrial policy.
  • Publication
    Digital Africa
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13) Begazo, Tania; Dutz, Mark Andrew; Blimpo, Moussa
    All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.