Advocacy & Lobbying: Amplifying Youth Voices Globally

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Advocacy & Lobbying
Amplifying Youth Voices Globally

Power to You(th) equips young leaders and movements
to shape policies and hold decision-makers accountable at local, regional, and international levels.

Grounded in Our Pillars

Our advocacy work is anchored on our pillars.

Bodily Autonomy & Integrity → Advocating for SRHR, protection from GBV, and legal reforms.
Youth Leadership & Participation → Elevating youth voices in decision-making spaces, and centering their voices and leadership throughout the lifecycle of advocacy initiatives..
Equity & Justice → Lobbying for inclusive policies addressing inequalities across gender, class, and geography.

Our Theory of Change in Action

At Power to You(th), advocacy is not an isolated activity, it is woven into our Theory of Change. We believe that sustainable change starts with empowered young people and youth-led organizations at the community level. Through our multi-level approach, we ensure that their lived realities shape national, regional, and international policies.

Local to Global Continuum: Advocacy begins in communities where youth movements identify priorities such as sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), protection from gender-based violence (GBV), and bodily autonomy. These local concerns are elevated into national dialogues, influencing government strategies, budget allocations, and accountability frameworks.

From Research to Influence: Evidence from our partners and youth-led monitoring initiatives feeds directly into policy briefs and position papers that we co-develop with our networks. This ensures advocacy is not only loud but credible and grounded in community realities.

Coalition Building: At the regional level, PtY partners with civil society coalitions, feminist networks, and youth movements to amplify shared agendas. We work to align grassroots priorities with continental frameworks such as the African Union’s Agenda 2063, ensuring youth rights are not sidelined.

Global Impact: Finally, our advocates carry these priorities into international convenings, especially at the UN Level, creating direct links between community-level realities and global decision-making bodies. In this way, our theory of change ensures that no level of advocacy is disconnected from another.

Where We Advocate

Our advocacy is visible and impactful in regional and international spaces where global agendas are shaped. By bringing youth advocates into these convenings, PtY ensures that policy conversations reflect the realities of young people most affected by inequality and injustice.

Regional Platforms

African Union (AU) & ECOSOCC

Regional Youth Forums & Feminist Networks

Sub-Regional Dialogues e.g. ECOWAS, EAC, and SADC etc

Regional & International Convenings

Human Rights Council :

Power to You(th) has been very present at the Human Rights Council, one of the only youth-led initiatives to be present! We work on making resolutions (political commitments) more progressive in terms of language on youth & SRHR. This covers topics such as;

Violence Against Women & Girls
Child, Early & Forced Marriage
Youth & Human Rights
And many more!

We provide policy briefs and argumentation to like-minded permanent missions to support their negotiations, and we have been cited many times! Notably, PtY was instrumental in 2023 in getting the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women to include Violence Against Girls; a big win for youth SRHR.

We also work with youth advocates to inform on how they can best engage with human rights spaces; this is through learning sessions, workshops, or mentoring when attending the Human Rights Council. Additionally, PtY produced youth friendly resources (document and videos) to disseminate the main advocacy outcomes of the HRC, which were used by youth advocates to follow-up in their countries, connecting national and international advocacy efforts. For the 53rd HRC session, for example, the document contains a comprehensive and easy to read summary of the two resolutions that PTY engaged in: (1) Resolution on Child, early and forced marriage: ending and preventing forced marriage and (2) Accelerating efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls: preventing and responding to all forms of violence against women and girls in criminal justice detention.

Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 68 & 69, New York):

The CSW remains the only and largest intergovernmental platform that is solely dedicated towards advancing gender equality, so it is important that PtY is represented! At the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) 2024, CHOICE leveraged its ECOSOC status to co-create written and oral statements with over 30 youthled organizations and PtY partners. These statements, delivered during key moments—from a pitch for the Dutch CSW delegation in January 2024 to an oral address at the Interactive Youth Dialogue during CSW68—demanded trust-based, multi-year, flexible funding and the removal of fiscal barriers that impede youth-led initiatives, especially those based in the Global South.

In 2025 PtY contributed to the CSW Revitalisation in two key ways; first, we actively participated in the WRC consultations to shape civil society’s common demands. The WRC gathered inputs through discussions and forms, and CHOICE (along with many partners) ensured youth priorities were included. Second, we took the initiative to craft our own organizational statement on CSW Revitalization, to amplify youth voices in particular. We submitted this statement to UN Women and member states and highlighted problems such as weakened multilateral commitment, inadequate accountability, and the harmful influence of anti-rights actors, which together have led to disconnects between CSW outcomes and real change on the ground. Our statement aligned closely with the WRC/YFC joint recommendations, but we took the opportunity to put a sharper point on youth-specific asks (for example the creation of a Youth Advisory Council, SRHR integration, robust accountability mechanisms modelled after the UPR).

International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD):

At international advocacy spaces, such as the CPD, PtY conducts advocacy by working on language negotiations to have the most progressive outcome document possible. For example, in 2025 PtY attended the CPD in New York in April. We took part in the two CSO briefings/consultations with the CPD Bureau, which serve as a key opportunity for civil society to give their opinion on several versions of the outcome document. CHOICE (our MIYP expert) contributed to youth movement building through their role as youth co-convenor at ISRRC and to the ISRRC mark-ups with a specific focus on youth. This year had a strong youth paragraph in the zero draft that could serve as a precedent for years to come!

Additionally, another way we do advocacy is to raise awareness of our work and network with relevant decision-makers by holding side events. At the CPD in 2025 CHOICE’s dedicated advocacy efforts towards governments and UN agencies for more MIYP at the CPD were rewarded with an increase of the inclusion of youth voices in the CPD, in the formal program as well as the side events. A great example was the intergenerational dialogue “Bridging Generations for Action” that CHOICE organized together with UNFPA and the governments of Benin, Denmark and the Netherlands, co-sponsored by the governments of Moldova, Uruguay, Japan, India, Lebanon and the UN Youth Office. In this panel of youth advocates, civil society and government representatives, the importance of cross-generational collaboration and dialogue as well as the follow-up of the ICPD PoA and the Cotonou Youth Action Agenda were emphasized.

Also, the ICPD+30 shadow-report ‘the Heart of the Matter’ was developed in 2023, covering three MoFA partnerships (Right Here Right Now, Power to You(th) and Generation G), 16 countries and four global regions. It concludes the findings with a Global Call to Action. The final report was launched during Women Deliver at a high-level reception at the residence of the Netherlands ambassador to Rwanda in Kigali.

Generation Equality Forums:
International Conference on Family Planning 2022 + 2025 (coming soon…):

Tools & Resources for Advocacy

Power to You(th) doesn’t just participate in global advocacy — we also equip young people and organizations with the tools they need to analyze, organize, and influence policy. These resources are designed to make lobbying more accessible and to ensure that youth voices are backed by evidence and strategy.