Action: Gather insights and perspectives from young people across the country
What we did
Conduct focus groups with children and adolescents in nine out of 14 regions
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Senegal: Youth Advocacy and Leadership project
Not Without Youth Leadership
Want to create a movement? 70,000 young people is a good way to start.
To understand what it’s like to be a young person today, you have to talk with them. That’s the simple but unequivocal truth. That’s why we placed youth at the centre of our Youth Advocacy and Leadership (YAL) project in Senegal. The project aimed to assess and advocate for the well-being of the more than 4 million adolescents who live in Senegal.
To tap into that huge cohort, we partnered with the Alliance of Youth Organizations in Senegal for Girls’ Rights. This connected us instantly with more than 60 youth-led organizations and their 70,000+ members. With offices in eight regions and a national executive team, the Alliance is involved with youth and youth services across the country. By partnering with the Alliance to lead, the project launched with a vast knowledge of youth experience and access to a network of young people.
The project’s first major assignment was to conduct large-scale research on youths’ needs and priorities through focus groups and interviews. The Alliance’s regional leaders helped identify vocal youth activists who could participate, as well as adolescents who had never publicly shared their views.
“Adolescent well-being encompasses many taboo subjects in Senegal”, says Khajida Sy, executive director for the Alliance. “Some of the youth we spoke with continue to be guided by sociocultural values that prevent them from raising the issues that concern them.”
You could see that there is a huge need among youth for accurate information.” – Khajida Sy, executive director for the Alliance of Youth Organizations in Senegal for Girls’ Rights
What surprising fact did the youth survey reveal?
Sy and her team guaranteed anonymity for the youth to share their thoughts on sensitive issues like sexual and reproductive health, early marriage, education, employment and gender-based violence. They were also asked to weigh in on recommendations for the government.
Many young participants knew exactly what they wanted, including integrating sexual and reproductive health into the school curriculum, enforcing laws against child marriage, and educational reforms that will prepare youth for a changing job market.
But what most surprised Sy was meeting young people who had little knowledge about sexual and reproductive health or their rights regarding their well-being.
“You could see that there is a huge need among youth for accurate information,” she says. “Early pregnancy, early marriage – a lot of these things are tied to a lack of education and the freedom to voice their concerns.”
Read on to learn more about four key actions the project took and discover who turned out to be unexpected allies.
Unlikely Allies for Adolescent Health
Building alliances with religious leaders
Though Senegal is a secular country, the vast majority of the population identifies as Muslim, and in many communities, religious leaders play an important and influential role. Change that is promoted with their support is much more likely to be successful.
When the Alliance of Youth Organizations in Senegal for Girls’ Rights presented its proposed advocacy agenda to a group of cultural and religious leaders alongside government authorities at a meeting in Dakar, its members were prepared to encounter resistance.
“We thought the religious authorities would trim 80% of the advocacy note, or they would refute our entire argument,” says Jean Christophe Gomis, the Alliance’s administrative officer.
The advocacy note covered topics that can be contentious, in part because they pertain to practices that are sometimes upheld by some religious, cultural or traditional norms. It included, for example, a recommendation for universal access to adolescent sexual and reproductive health services and proposed that the laws preventing female genital mutilation and gender-based violence be more strongly enforced. It also demanded that the legal age of marriage for girls be increased from 16 to 18.
Building Alliances with Religious Leaders
Gomis explained that the religious leaders were invited to assess the advocacy note to determine whether any of the points conflicted with religious principles, which could deter their support. To his surprise, the resistance he anticipated never appeared. “They accepted practically all of the points we proposed,” says Gomis. “They also want to support the advocacy process now.”
The leaders didn’t only approve the points – they also went on to develop a document that highlighted verses from the Quran and the Bible that align with the note and that promote the importance of adolescent health and well-being.
The document will be a useful tool in engaging other religious leaders on these issues and encouraging their support of the recommended changes. It was also added to the project’s advocacy tool kit, which the Alliance’s youth organizations are using in their campaigns and training workshops.
“We had a legal argument and a social argument [for these changes]”, says Gomis. “Now we have a religious argument as well.”
Project highlights
Partners:
- Project lead: Alliance des Organisations de Jeunes du Sénégal pour les Droits des Filles (Alliance of Youth Organizations in Senegal for Girls’ Rights)
- Ministry of Health and Social Action, Ministry of Youth
- Civil-society organizations, including Association Santé Mobile, Youth Wins, Billi Nao Nao Sénégal, Senegalese branch of the West African Network of Young Women Leaders (ROAJELF), Youth Women Action Senegal and others
Four key actions
Action: Identify the gaps between policy and practice when it comes to adolescent well-being
What we did
Convene a workshop with civil-society organizations to draft recommendations for renewed or new government commitments
Action: Lobby political leaders to increase support for adolescent well-being
What we did
Hold a high-level advocacy meeting with political and religious leaders
Action: Raise public awareness of the 1.8 Billion Young People for Change campaign and the priorities and aspirations of the country’s youth
What we did
Hold a national advocacy event to present the updated advocacy note to the government
Our Achievements
- Due to significant political instability in Senegal in 2023, our advocacy efforts didn’t secure a formal government commitment.
- However, the Ministry of Health and Social Action expressed appreciation for our efforts to gather feedback from young people across the country. It plans to leverage the research results in its work moving forward and has invited youth participation in the Ministry’s Reproductive Health task force.
- Additionally, the Alliance of Youth Organizations in Senegal for Girls’ Rights has started monitoring program implementation as part of its “Agir pour les filles” (Act for Girls) campaign, which places girls’ priorities at the heart of municipal and departmental elections.
“Young people know that their dynamism, their mobilization can contribute a lot to national development and to the advancement of their rights. That’s why we’ve come together.” —Oumou Ngom, youth advocate with the Réseau Siggil Jigeen, a youth network and member of the Alliance of Youth Organizations in Senegal for Girls’ Rights.
To hear more from the young people involved in the campaign, check out this video.
This project was delivered with funding from Fondation Botnar and in partnership with PMNCH.
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