What Does it Take to Be a Gender and Youth Champion?
The GAYA (Gender and Youth Activity) needs your input! On September 27, join GAYA for a participatory discussion on what core competencies are needed for gender and youth champions and how we can promote them within food security programs. Gender, Youth, and Social Dynamics (GYSD) Leads on Resilience and Emergency Food Security Activities are often hired with either a gender background or youth background, but rarely both. Hiring gender and youth staff with the right skills, and supporting them to grow those skills, is a key to program success.
In 2017, the TOPS program created a Core Competencies series. These tools were intended to provide hiring managers, program managers, and program staff with explanations of the basic skills and knowledge senior technical staff need to carry out effective food security programs, including gender staff. GAYA is developing a Youth Core Competencies guide as a companion to the Gender Core Competencies guide. Now we need your input to decide how to make these documents as useful as possible!
Through this participatory discussion, GAYA would like your input to:
- Understand who is most likely to use these documents, and how;
- Identify ways to weave together gender and youth competencies to strengthen the capacity of GYSD leads; and
- Explore how these guides can help create buy-in from organizational leadership, field implementers, and donors for the importance of gender and youth integration.
The feedback gathered in this discussion will help GAYA create revised Gender and Youth Core Competencies documents structured to meet the use cases identified in this session. We will then return to this community to validate the content of these guides.