Youth at PAI

PAI and Youth

Population Action International (PAI) believes that young people are an often overlooked source of innovative ideas and energy for taking on the world’s challenges. PAI’s youth-led, Young People’s Working Group (YPWG), is working to highlight the unique sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) needs of young people through research, capacity building, advocacy and skills-building trainings within the U.S. and abroad. The YPWG work to build new youthful dimensions into PAI’s own work. With a receptive policy audience, engaged young leaders and partners, YPWG works to reach diverse and crucial audiences with sound research to promote improved sexual reproductive health and rights outcomes for young people.

Why Youth?

• Young people under the age of 25 make up half of the world's population--the largest cohort of this age group ever
• 1.3 billion of the world's 1.5 billion youth live in developing countries.
• Worldwide, pregnancy is the leading cause of death for young women aged 15 to 19, with complications of childbirth and unsafe abortion being the major risk factors.[i] 
• Girls aged 15 to 19 are twice as likely to die in childbirth than those in their 20s;  the risk rises to five times that for girls under 15.[ii]
• Youth are most flexible and perhaps best able to adapt to and make use of new opportunities offered by globalization [iii].
• Young people are not just victims or problems to be solved. They are partners in development.
• Involving young people in decision-making is not only good in and of itself but it also leads to better policy outcomes. [iv]

Our Activities

Funding to Youth-Led Initiatives in Developing Countries:

The YPWG will provide advocacy sub-grants and technical training to support capacity building of youth-led organizations in the developing world. Selected grantees will seek to improve young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights; foster women’s empowerment and gender equality; highlight the linkages between SRHR and HIV; reduce gender-based violence, early marriage and adolescent maternal mortality; and promote environmental sustainability. All applicants must be based in developing countries.

Want to apply to be a sub-grantee? Please email youth@popact.org to learn more about our sub-granting program.

US University Tour and Documentary Presentations:

Building on the success of our pilot trip to Elon University and the University of North Carolina’s School of Global Public Health in 2008, the YPWG will continue university tours to educate and engage US youth leaders in the global health, public policy and international development fields. PAI staff provide students and faculty with interactive presentations and resources to get involved with our work. Universities are responsible for partial costs of the tour.

Think PAI should come to your university? Please email youth@popact.org to learn more about our university tour program.

Internships and Fellowships:

Since the summer of 2008, PAI has been engaging young people through a formal internship program, which gives undergraduate and graduate students from diverse backgrounds the opportunity to work alongside PAI staff and develop skills in their particular focus area. The PAI International Fellowship Program in partnership with Atlas Service Corps aims at promoting a global partnership for development by placing civil society leader/s from the global south for a period of one year in one or more of its departments. The Fellows then commit to return and work in the civil society sector of their home country, sharing new skills, best practices, and valuable experience. PAI is happy to welcome Ms. Meher Rehman from New Delhi, India. Meher has worked largely on women’s empowerment and the prevention of gender-based violence.

Our Research

Factsheets

• Why Good Sexual and Reproductive Health is Critical to the Well-Being of Youth

Reports

• Comprehensive HIV Prevention: Condoms and Contraceptives Count (2008)
• Shape of Things to Come: Why Age Structure Matters To A Safer, More Equitable World
• Why Good Sexual and Reproductive Health is Critical to the Well-Being of Youth
• A Measure of Survival: Calculating Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Risk
• The Security Demographic: Population and Civil Conflict after the Cold War
• In This Generation: Sexual and Reproductive Health Policies for a Youthful World
• Educating Girls: Gender Gaps and Gains Wall Chart

Blogs and Statements

• Future Prospects for the Youth in Uganda (March 2009)
• Going Bananas for Sex Education (December 2008)

Our Youth Partners

• Atlas Corps Fellows
• Equidad de Genero: Ciudadania Trabajo y Familia
• Vaestoliitto
• YouthVision Zambia
• Youth Coalition
• YouAct
• Advocates for Youth
• REDLAC

Other Resources for Youth

• Youths Trained to Promote Condoms
• All female youth team at United Nation climate change talks (Earth Times)
• Youth Reproductive and Sexual Health in Botswana
• Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health: Trends and Challenges (Advocates for Youth)
• Symposium to Focus on AIDS, Poverty’s Impact on African Youth--Stanford Report
• Conferencia Internacional (FPFE)
• Nigeria: Women and Youth Most Vulnerable, President Yar'Adua Tells Commonwealth Secretary (allAfrica.com)

Contact Us

Got questions? Email youth@popact.org