Youth Leaders for Nutrition Advocacy Toolkit

A toolkit for youth advocates, designed by youth advocates.

Today there are over 1.2 billion adolescents aged 10-19 in the world. Nearly a quarter of the people in Sub-Saharan Africa are aged 10 to 19. The health and nutrition of adolescents are becoming global priorities. Adolescents themselves have the best understanding of young people’s needs, how to address them, and how to get them involved. Because of this, youth voices can be an incredibly powerful force for bringing about the changes they want to see. With this in mind, this toolkit was created through a participatory and collaborative process with Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Youth Leaders for Nutrition, supported by Save the Children and GAIN.

What is in this toolkit?

a) Step-by-step guide: This toolkit will help you design, develop, and implement an advocacy strategy for improving adolescent nutrition. It will take you through identifying your issue, planning your campaign, delivering your messages, assessing your progress and reporting back to your community. But remember, advocacy is an ongoing effort. It is not a straight road but a ‘cycle,’ which may often mean going back to a previous step to adjust your plan.

b)Tools and templates (from page 35 of the step-by-step guide): The toolkit also includes a glossary of key terms, additional resources and templates to help you as you develop your campaign.

c) Nutrition Briefs: This toolkit also contains a series of short briefs with important facts about adolescent nutrition and how nutrition connects to other issues affecting young people. There is also a map showing the links among those issues and their connection to adolescent nutrition. The links with other issues are key to understanding the nutrition issues and the ways you might address them.