Engagement Meetings with Duty Bearers
The primary targets for the #Inclusive-Young-Voices (#IYV) Project are the duty bearers – state presidents, ministers, members of parliament, mayors and councilors, and other policymakers.
The Young Writers’ Competition, for example, does not only resourcefully prepares the youth and children with disabilities to effectively participate in the in-country Children & Youth Dialogues withion the five pilot copuntries, it will also prepares them to effectively engage with theor own duty bearers.
Furthermore, the #IYV urgently recognizes the unique inequalities and barriers that young persons with disabilities face in accessing rights such as education and information, job training, employment opportunities, and disability-inclusive social protection systems. Therefore, the winning essays will not only be published in local newspapers, in the SAFOD book anthology, on social media and other online platforms. The issues raised in the essays will also be incorporated in the Calls to Action Statements that will be presented to various strategic duty bearers through a series a Engagement Meetings with them organized jointly by SAFOD and its national affiliates.
Participation is a right and a practical imperative, therefore this intervention will create an opportunity for youth and children with disabilities to meaningfully participate, share their experiences and challenges to inform policies, plans and interventions particularly those that are designed to address them.
The Engagement Meetings will ensure that targeted duty bearers have an opportunity to listen directly to children and youth with disabilities themselves and to take due account of their views and experiences. This activity will create mechanisms for accountability to ensure redress of children’s rights and ensure that duty bearers and other actors comply with their obligations to children with disabilities, including the specific commitments they pledged at the Global Disability Summit (GDS) 2018.
It is in this context why the during the Training & Mentorship of Youth Ambassadors, the trainers themselves will also be oriented on the content of the GDS Advocacy Package/Toolkit created by SAFOD, so that they – together with the Youth Ambassadors themselves – can be guided with tips on how they can use the toolkit to identify specific issues for social media advocacy – besides just imparting technical skills in effectively running advocacy campaigns using social media and other online tools.