Young people know their challenges best and are passionate about addressing them with their unique perspectives on localization, relevance, and diversity. Unfortunately, many humanitarian and development efforts overlook their input, failing to genuinely involve them without tokenism or manipulation. This denies young people their right to contribute to decisions affecting them and misses opportunities to create sustainable solutions for the mental health and well-being of youth worldwide.
The MHPSS Collaborative seeks to reduce power imbalances between adults and young people in mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) initiatives. We achieve this by fostering secure and meaningful involvement, participation, and leadership of adolescents and youth in program development, advocacy, and research. Our aim is to enhance the capacity, voices, and leadership of young individuals, enabling them to actively engage in advocating for, developing, and researching solutions to promote their mental health and well-being now and in the future.
2023-2025 strategic plan to support and enhance the voices and wellbeing of young people
Download PDFYouth participation and engagement advisor
Victor Ugo
MHPSS and Youth Engagement Advisor
Youth participation and leadership
Strenghtening capacity, participation and leadership of youth meaningfully engage in advocacy, programming and research