CONCAUSA Youth Sustainable Development Leadership Program
Description
Since 2015, America Solidaria has been collaborating with the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) to create CONCAUSA, a program to empower, connect, and mobilize adolescents from the Americas, creating a network of youth leading service projects related to the Sustainable Development Goals. Through an online application process, youth who demonstrate their leadership potential and project quality are selected to participate in educational workshops in their own countries and/or in an international summit with youth from across the Americas where they present their projects to peers and United Nations representatives.
This program brings together youth social leaders between 15 and 17 years old from the Americas, from different economic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds to hone their skills in community-led development. It has a multiplier and lasting effect on action for the SDGs to achieve a more sustainable future for all.<br />
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CONCAUSA calls youth to have an active role in fulfilling the SDGs in relation to their own communities, take ownership of this process within their own spheres of influence, and take action for achieving social change. The program’s main objectives are:<br />
Engaging youth in the Sustainable Development Goals and encouraging them to see themselves as protagonists of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.<br />
Strengthening project management skills among young people, both for the development of innovative and collaborative solutions, and to mobilize the future leaders of the hemisphere.<br />
Empowering adolescents to spread models of sustainable social change in their communities.<br />
Creating a network of thousands of youth agents of transformation who are aware of their rights and promote them in their communities.<br />
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CONCAUSA takes a “glocal” approach based in building an international network of youth leaders who have come to sustainable development leadership through action in service to their local communities. Many are young people from historically and geographically marginalized rural, isolated, indigenous, or impoverished communities outside of the traditional reach of international consultations and programs. Teams from remote places such as San Mateo del Mar, Mexico or La Paloma, Uruguay have traveled outside their home countries for the first time to share their experiences, gaining a more regional perspective through peer-to-peer sharing with other young leaders. <br />
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Unlike other existing youth movements or networks, CONCAUSA does not simply amplify youth voices or provide spaces for consultation; rather, it promotes the development of terrain-based experience, knowledge, and action from an early age. The program accompanies emerging young leaders, providing them with resources and training to take their projects to the next level. <br />
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Given CONCAUSA’s continental scope, regional coordination has been an important challenge, across geographic and linguistic boundaries as well as cultural differences, as is maintaining a global perspective while promoting local action. Consistently taking steps to move toward becoming fully youth-led has also been a key process. Some challenges overcome include articulation with United Nations entities such as regional forums on the 2030 Agenda and establishing shared governance between America Solidaria, ECLAC, and UNICEF LACRO.
Our program grew out of the tremendous energy and desire to connect expressed by youth like 15 year-old María Esperanza de la Cruz from Ecuador: “We were active in social projects in our communities, but we wanted to join other youths… to support each other in initiatives to change the world. We want it to be a movement that starts transforming minds, from small towns to big cities.” It also grew out of a conversation between institutional representatives from ECLAC, UNICEF, and America Solidaria that has resulted in a shared governance structure for the CONCAUSA program.
CONCAUSA invites adolescents ages 15-17 from all countries in the Americas to apply with projects they have been carrying out responding to a challenge they observe in their local communities related to the SDGs. Coordinators in eight America Solidaria offices across Latin America (in Chile, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, Colombia, Haiti, Mexico, and the US) carry out outreach and accompaniment for young people interested in applying. The top 17 teams selected by a jury of representatives from America Solidaria, ECLAC and UNICEF are invited to a international summit in Santiago, Chile for a week of workshops on advocacy, social project management, collaborative work, leadership, and interculturality. This week culminates with a seminar in which participants present their projects to their peers and regional authorities.
Monitoring takes place through subsequent annual follow-up with all of the groups who have participated in the program to see how the experience of accompaniment in developing their project, the youth summit, and subsequent participation in a regional network served them. One group successfully partnered with an international organization, because CONCAUSA gave them “a better project with more concrete goals... a more expansive vision of partnership… and a well-planned schedule of activities.” Uruguayan participant Guillermo Passeggi used his CONCAUSA experience to transform his project into an NGO, training his volunteers in techniques he learned in the program: “We learned a lot from CONCAUSA, which shows how alternative education allows you to transform lives, and that is the path I want to follow.”
An important evolution has been building a more participatory governance structure, engaging youth as decision-makers for the program alongside the original organizing entities, formal ambassadors for the program at a communicational level, and network implementation volunteers.
Since the initiative began we have been able to mobilize a total of 4,141 youth applicants working actively on social change projects. The process of application can be formative for those who were not thinking of their project within the framework of the SDGs because it educates them on each of the seventeen goals and requires them to associate their project with at least one. Of those applicants, 162 have gone through the formative experience of the international youth summit. Two years later, nearly 80% of surveyed participants in the youth summit have continued pursuing their projects. Over half of the summit participants have subsequently joined other initiatives or opportunities to advance the 2030 Agenda, ranging from local volunteer work to student movements and youth councils. We have also created a youth governance structure for CONCAUSA with a consultative committee focused on innovation and strategic development for the program, youth spokespeople, and an international network directed entirely by former participants. We measure impact over time by tracking projects and administering follow-up surveys to participants assessing their individual growth, project management knowledge, commitment to sustainable development, and networks. Of the teams who participated in the summit in the first two years, 67% stated they improved their strategic planning; 32% improved their approach to storytelling about their project and 44% gained confidence in themselves. They describe developing leadership, teamwork, and a broader perspective on Latin America.
In addition to the growth experienced by the youth participants, CONCAUSA impacts hundreds of community members served by their 49 projects in topics like recycling, permaculture, nutrition, peacebuilding, and cultural preservation, most of which are going into their third year of project operation. This program supports youth leaders in providing innovative sustainable solutions for their own communities. This network of youth leaders has been expanding, allowing marginalized and isolated youth to share practices across cultural and geographic borders. CONCAUSA has a lasting empowering effect on young people, and through their social projects, improves the quality of life for their communities. Participants are taking their projects to the next level. For example, Mexican participant Francisco Zamora won an award for best practices for his project at the 2018 event “Young people towards 2030: Innovation for transformation” in Acapulco.
The CONCAUSA international youth summit has been replicated nationally across seven countries and could be implemented worldwide. Seven of the eight America Solidaria offices held local or national-level gatherings in 2018, and alumni in Ecuador have also been spontaneously organizing local gatherings. Because it provides a framework for young people to act based on local knowledge, is also scalable to different contexts ranging from rural to urban, at local, regional, national, or international levels.
Through the CONCAUSA initiative youth in the Americas have found a space to network with other youth committed to sustainable development, a platform to amplify their voice and their solutions for a more equitable region and honed their leadership and project management skills. Gradually CONCAUSA is building a network that will transform the region, from local communities. The project is groundbreaking because most initiatives that focus on youth include young persons over the age of 18, typically between 18 and 24. By targeting adolescents, this project seeks to capitalize on and strengthen the commitment to the 2030 Agenda among those at the initial stages of youth, so that they may return to their communities as advocates of sustainable change. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development proposes that we build a new type of society, a society where economic development, social development and environmental protection go hand in hand. An inclusive society for everyone, where no one is left behind. This ambitious Agenda will not be achieved without the collaboration of everyone. The voices, actions and solutions of young people, as well as their scope and willingness to influence decision-making, are essential to achieve long-term sustainable development.The youth who participate in CONCAUSA appropriate the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals, contributing with their grain of sand to transform our region and serve as catalysts for others in their communities to become involved, advancing towards the same goal.
SDGS & Targets
Deliverables & Timeline
Resources mobilized
Partnership Progress
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| 14.1 | By 2025, prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution |
| 14.2 | By 2020, sustainably manage and protect marine and coastal ecosystems to avoid significant adverse impacts, including by strengthening their resilience, and take action for their restoration in order to achieve healthy and productive oceans |
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Entity
Region
- Latin America and the Caribbean
Geographical coverage
Website/More information
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Contact Information
Rebecca Nelson, Coordinating Director