Young people in Malawi take the lead to push for change.
“ Young people were eager to voice their concerns – what they want to change, what they want from the country and from the world.” This, youth activist Prisca Tadala Dimu says, is why 200 young people gathered in Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital city, on October 11, 2023.
The Global Forum for Adolescents, the world’s largest-ever gathering on adolescent well-being, was scheduled to kick off the same day. Held virtually, the forum would be attended by more than 9,000 people from 130 countries around the world.
The youth gathering in Lilongwe used the momentum of the forum as an opportunity to raise their own voices and try to influence change within their home country. Participants travelled from either end of the country, some driving as long as five hours to join the event; hundreds more joined the conversation via social media, eager to discuss the pressing issues facing adolescents across the nation.
Dimu, one of the event’s organizers, worked with the team of youth leaders at the centre of Plan International’s Youth Advocacy and Leadership project to design a program that brought youth voices to the forefront. Young participants engaged in dialogue with government officials and experts from global agencies, including the World Health Organization and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), to push for changes that would meet their needs.
For Dimu, the effort was personal, even as it targeted bigger-picture change by supporting the 1.8 Billion Young People for Change campaign. “I’m part of the 1.8 billion. Most of the issues raised by adolescents and young people are things I experience myself,” she says.
The National Adolescent Forum in Lilongwe offered a platform for young people in Malawi to demand better policies, programs and financing for services that contribute to their well-being.
“We want this information to be known countrywide,” says Dimu, “so that everyone in every district understands what the youth across the nation want.”
Read on to discover what they asked for and how they are partnering with key organizations to drive change.
Youth bring their own views to hot topics like sexual and reproductive health.
Fifteen young people sit in a room full of adults to talk about sex. Does that sound uncomfortable? That’s part of why it’s important.
The Youth Advocacy and Leadership project invited 15 youth to lead a dialogue with civil-society organizations, researchers and ministry representatives on how to support the well-being of adolescents in Malawi. Young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights was a hot topic, and it quickly became clear that the youth saw things very differently than many adults in the room.
“Older participants initially felt it was inappropriate for young girls to access family planning services,” explains Dr. Mary Shawa, a gender and public health specialist who led the Youth Advocacy and Leadership project in Malawi. “This is a common view for the older generation in Malawi. In contrast, youth participants argued that any sexually active girl needs protection from sexually transmitted infections.”
Because hearing young people’s views and priorities was an expressed goal of the session, everyone involved made the effort to listen, even when they heard perspectives that challenged their views.
“The intergenerational gap was very clear, but through the discussions, we came to understand each other,” says Shawa. Through this understanding, participants agreed to ask the government to reduce the age of consent for access to sexual and reproductive health services from 15 to 10 years.
Youth challenged other misconceptions, too, bringing their first-hand understanding of the adolescent experience. For example, when ranking priorities for adolescent well-being, they didn’t put “youth-friendly health services” at the top of the list, as many people in the development sector assumed they would. Instead, youth leaders like Prisca Tadala Dimu explained that employability and access to jobs were some of the biggest concerns for the youth she represented. Thanks to this input, the priorities being put forward to the government were re-ordered to better reflect what is most important to youth.
“We always talk about how youth need to be able to participate. But throughout this process, youth were actually at the forefront.”
We were not just there to listen. We were included in the decision-making process. This is something that will always stay with me.” –Prisca Tadala Dimu, youth leader
We brought young people and ministry representatives together to review existing national and global commitments, identify the gaps between policy and practice, and draft recommendations for government action.
We supported youth leaders to attend regional and global events to amplify youth voices from Malawi.
We organized a national advocacy event to coincide with the Global Forum for Adolescents and the International Day of the Girl.
We organized information sessions in Malawi’s southern and eastern regions. The sessions were facilitated by the Youth Advocacy and Leadership project’s youth leaders, with the support of Plan team members.
At the SDG Summit in New York in September 2023 and again at the Global Forum for Adolescents one month later, Malawi’s Minister of Gender, Community Development and Social Welfare presented the government’s signed commitment, pledging increased financial, policy and programmatic resources for adolescent well-being.
» Read the full commitment statement.
This project was delivered with funding from Fondation Botnar and in partnership with PMNCH.
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