Youth as agents of change in promoting inclusive resilience and accountability: A case study of PRAYAS in Nepal

• In Event: Youth as Agents of Change: Cases from Nepal, Rural USA, Saint Lucia, and Dominican Republic

Proposal

Nepal is highly vulnerable to natural disasters. The country ranks fourth, eleventh and thirtieth in terms of vulnerability to climate change, earthquake and flood risks respectively (UNDP Nepal). Nepal’s frequent disasters fall hardest on those already most vulnerable: women, children, youth, person with disabilities (PWDs), as well as other excluded groups. Education services are frequently disrupted because of natural disasters and schools do not have disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation strategies in place to mitigate risks.

Nepal has introduced a promising policy that promotes the participation of youth in the local Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) activities. It is a right step of the government considering young people account for approximately 20.8 percent of total population of Nepal (age group 16-25 years)i indicating ‘youth bulge’- a phenomenon where young people account for the largest segment of the population of a country. To contribute towards the government’s policy and acknowledging the power of youth as agents of change, VSO focused on empowering youth to be part of the solutions. However, the 2020 baseline evaluation of VSO’s, Promoting Inclusive Resilience and Accountability through Youth Association Strengthening (PRAYAS) project found that several barriers existed for youth to actively engage in the local DRR/CCA planning, implementation and monitoring processes. VSO implemented the PRAYAS project in Nepal from 2020 to 2022. PRAYAS applied volunteering for development approach and engaged with youth as change makers. The project focused on building youth voice, agency, and leadership through mentoring and coaching. The goal of the project was to empower youth to lead community and youth-led advocacy for DDR and CCA activities such as participating in participatory planning, implementation and monitoring of CCA/DRR policies, and raising community awareness on the issues of climate change.

This paper directly contributes to Sub-Theme 3: Theories, Methodologies and Protest as this paper presents methods the project applied in holding duty bearers accountable by empowering youth to realise their voice, agency and leadership for change.

Using the evidence from the endline evaluation of PRAYAS and qualitative data collected from in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with youth advocates after one year since the project concluded, the paper answers the following questions:

What approaches did youth use to understand the impact of climate and disaster on Education and the opportunities to tackle them?

What interventions are effective in empowering youth leaders as agents of change to actively participate in participatory planning, implementation and monitoring of CCA/DRR policies?

What roles could Youth-Led CSOs (YLCs) play in engaging youth and other marginalised groups in local Climate and Disaster Resilience (CDR) processes in the federal governance context of Nepal?

What roles can local community media play in promoting transparency and youth engagement to enhance education outcomes?

What challenges do youth leaders face in changing knowledge, attitudes and practices of youth on CDR processes?

How could we increase the participation of marginalised and vulnerable people and their use of social accountability?

What can local government agencies and duty bearers do to create a conducive environment for meaningful participation of youth and vulnerable groups in planning, implementation and monitoring of CCA/DRR policies, particularly in education settings?

Author

• Purna Kumar Shrestha, VSO