Since 2020, Procasur is partnering with IFAD in the piloting of the “grassroots approach to connect youth voices to action” as a way to achieve inclusivity of youth voices and effectively connect them to the design and implementation of projects interventions and strategies.

As part of this process, the setting up of Rural Youth Alliances has been promoted to facilitate the establishment of an inclusive and democratic mechanism that connects young women and men at the grass-roots level and that is able to systematically capture youth demands, aspirations, challenges and solutions to inform IFAD and other key stakeholders’ programmes. Currently the roll out of Rural Youth Alliances is a pilot initiative taking place in 4 pilot countries: Colombia, Rwanda, Senegal and Morocco.

In those countries Procasur and IFAD have supported the establishment of Rural youth Alliances, facilitating the development of leadership and management capacities amongst youth organizations to enable them to represent the voices and perspectives of rural youth toward key actors dealing with rural development. Through this pilot process, each Alliance has been supported to identify the memberships, define aspects associated with the mission, vision and governance system as well as the definition of an organizational identity.

In this frame, Procasur has designed and developed a training course on “Political Advocacy” targeting key members of the Rural Youth Alliances, and aimed at enabling them to strengthen their capacities to develop advocacy, consultative and representative functions. Additionally, specific workshops to discuss the sustainability of the Rural Youth Alliances have been carried out with the members of the Alliances in the different countries, contributing to the consolidation and strengthening of a long-term strategy and perspective in the action plans of each Alliance.