• When youth are involved, programmes immediately have long-term sustainability, because the next generation are already integrated into the framework.
• The ability of young people to effectively reach out and communicate with other young people cannot be over-emphasised. This is where YLD has a comparative advantage within development programmes.
• Because young people are happy to take their wages, not in cash, but in experience as volunteers, they are inherently cost-effective. Their desire is to help themselves and their communities.

• YOUTH COMMITMENTS

• Seek out active partnership with adult mentors who have relevant experience.
• Undertake adequate research so that planned projects are relevant, appropriate and sustainable for the community.
• Create their own training programmes to ensure the viability and sustainability of their projects.
• Make greater efforts within and between youth organisations to engender a strong, collaborative institutional culture.
• Raise awareness of the MDGs and wider development issues among their peers on the local level.
• Encourage and recruit active volunteers among their peers to complete lowcost community development projects.

• Governments, NGOs, development agencies, civil society groups and other stakeholders involve youth in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of development programmes.
• Devolved structures such as district development councils and HIV/AIDS committees incorporate youth representation and also make deliberate efforts to involve youth in the design and management of all their programmes.
• Inter-governmental agencies, central government and local government agencies create specific structures and processes to facilitate true and meaningful partnerships with youth. This could include the creation of youth desks in the various ministries of national government and the different organs of regional and international institutions.
• Youth be involved in the consultation processes of individual country development strategies (such as Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, Country Strategy Papers), and that the outcome papers acknowledge the role of YLD in national development strategies.
• National legislation governing the registration of NGOs be sufficiently flexible to enable young people to register their organisations and so be eligible for funding of YLD projects and other benefits.

• Development research be disaggregated to show youth specific data. For instance, poverty-related research findings should be broken down to show youth specific poverty indices. This also applies to other areas including conflict, health, political participation and agriculture.
• A regular UN report, in the same vein as the UNDP Human Development Report, be commissioned in order to make credible information on YLD available to policy makers and other development actors. This report should track the progress made in involving youth in development at the national and international level.

• 0.7% of all Overseas Development Assistance [ODA] to be allocated to youth-led development initiatives, as called for in the Casablanca Declaration. In addition, we request that 0.7% of international NGO development funding also be invested in YLD.
• More emphasis should be placed on the training of young people in skills related to organisational management, human resource development and the media.
• National Youth Development funds be created to help create jobs and youth-led business start-ups, with participation from governments and the private sector through incentives such as tax rebates for participating companies.
• National donor consultative platforms be established to allow for a coordinated and efficient approach to funding youth led development initiatives.
• National governments support young entrepreneurship by fostering a culturally, educationally and politically supportive environment together with the financial capital to start up such enterprises.
  

After the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, the new ministry of culture and education were smart enough to create literacy brigades to resolve the huge illiteracy problem amongst the most disadvantaged people of the country – running at 70% at the time of the revolution. After two years of youth touring the country teaching each other to read, illiteracy dropped to about 30% of the population – done at a tenth of the cost of a professional teacher led literacy programme.

• Education that includes the principles of citizenship, human rights and sustainability. These issues provide the foundation for development and a framework in which to design projects. Particular attention should be paid to the principle of human dignity.
• The promotion of successful youth peer-to-peer education models and the provision of funding for their replication.
• National governments, NGOs and international agencies to include skills training in development issues in all primary, secondary and tertiary education institutions with a special focus on the primary level given MDG goal two.