Children & Young People: Participating in Decision-Making

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This is a guide document on children and young people's participation in decision-making, produced by the Alliance of Youth Executive Officers in cooperation with UNICEF.
The document reinforces the commitment of these organizations to enabling children and young people to express their views.
Furthermore, the document presents the justification and identifies the underlying principles for promoting the meaningful participation of children and young people in decision-making processes. The main barriers to achieving this goal are discussed and guidelines are provided on how to create a more conducive enviroment. The document ends with an appeal to individuals and institutions to rise to the challenge of moving this agenda forward.

The Education of Young People: A statement at the dawn of the 21st century

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The Chief Executive Officers of the largest worldwide, non-formal education organisations who shared their vision of the non-formal education of young people into the next century.
"One of the challenges before us all is to realise that accelerating changes in society are impacting to a significant extent on young people and that this needs to be reflected in the educational opportunities offered to them. A major problem today is that formal academic education continues to be seen as the only essential part of education".
Thus non-formal education, which is best equipped to prepare young people to cope with social changes, is underestimated and opportunities to benefit from it are not fully realised.
There is a need to recognise the universal validity of the non-formal education of young people, particularly through the work of world youth education organisations.

National Youth Policies - Towards an autonomous, supportive, responsible and committed youth

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A working document from the point of view of "non-formal education" youth organizations.
This document contains some recommendations on national youth policies, without which education in general (and non-formal education in particular) cannot find its rightful place in the proper long-term and global perspective.
There is a need for each nation to adopt a long-term national youth policy, based on a consensus of all the country's social and political forces, aimed at enabling the young people of today and tomorrow to grow as autonomous, supportive, responsible and committed people. Such a policy should be an integrated one: it should concern all youth NGOs in the country and all ministries in any government.

Girls and Young Women in the 21st Century

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This document argues that constructive considerations of gender should be integrated into all programmes for children and young people.

The document is addressed to all those involved in shaping youth policies. It first describes the situation facing women and the consequent issues for girls and young women. The majority of the document focuses on recommendations.