Entry points for youth involvement in developing an LRP strategic plan:

• Consider whether the lead team for the strategic planning process can include at least one person with the relevant skills to promote youth rights and youth engagement.
• Invite youth representatives should be to strategy planning workshops where you identify goals, objectives and outcomes.
• Invite the youth focal point from your country office to participate in the strategy development processes.
• Set indicators and develop your M&E framework collectively with youth and other rights holders.
• Strategic plans should specifically highlight your approach to youth participation and youth engagement.
• Consider whether young people who have been involved in strategy development have the capacity to and are interested in writing up part of the strategic plan.

Planning tools for use with youth

• Setting goals, objectives and outcomes - Maps can be used at strategy development stages to anticipate changes or expectations for the future. They can help young people to create a vision for the impact of an LRP programme, and work particularly well for younger groups of youth.
• Deciding on priorities - Tools such as pairwise ranking, or diamond ranking can be used to set priorities.
• Planning for action - A timeline or river can be used to plot activities and highlight how young people can be engaged as partners/leaders in activities/events or key milestones that will take place in the LRP. The balloons and stones tool can be used to  identify factors that might help or hinder the group in its work or progress towards a goal..

Supporting young people to develop a critical pathway

A critical pathway is a visual representation of a theory of change for a project or programme. It helps to determine what change we want to see from a programme, and how we will make this change happen. There are many tools that can help a group visualise a critical pathway, for example:

• A river can be used to visualise the outcomes needed to get from where we are now (the start of the river) to where we want to be (the end of the river).
• A bridge is another way to imagine how to create change. Consider which planks are needed (outcomes) to get you from this side (the current situation) to the other side of the bridge (the ideal situation).

Stakeholders for youth

A stakeholder analysis is essential when planning your LRP strategy. It can build upon the Youth Rights Analysis you did at appraisal stages1 by exploring certain themes in greater depth. By the LRP strategy development stage, you will have a clearer idea of the issues facing youth, and where the focus of your LRP objectives may lie. Stakeholders are those who are directly/indirectly affected by the work you are planning to do in the LRP. They are also those who have the resources, power or influence to promote or obstruct youth rights.

References

• Youth Programming Toolkit, ActionAid, 2015, p. 45-54.