How our scalable youth policies have reached 1.5m Argentinians

This piece was written by Pedro Robledo, Executive Director of the National Youth Institute, Ministry of Health and Social Development, Argentina, and Natalia Herbst, Director for Community Organisations, National Youth Institute, Ministry of Health and Social Development, Argentina.

In 2018, Argentina’s Undersecretary of Youth became the National Youth Institute (INJUVE). The presidential decree that established INJUVE widened the scope of our work to include the responsibility for all national level youth-targeted policies.

Our aim is to improve the country’s investments in scalable youth policies. And since the beginning of the current administration in 2016, INJUVE’s work has reached over 1,472,000 young people through a diverse portfolio of projects and activities.

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This includes our four flagship projects.

Houses of the Future created day centres in vulnerable settings and developed a Social Vulnerability Index to quantify youth profiles at the time they join the program. There are currently six operating houses across the country and two more under construction. Some 22,000 young people have participated in the activities offered at these day centres, which span from theatre classes to robotics, employability workshops and 3D modelling.

Hablemos de todo (Let’s talk about everything) is an interactive digital platform that informs young people in a fun, friendly and visual way about a variety of topics traditionally seen as taboo — including sexuality and gender, sexual health and reproductive rights, subtance abuse, bullying, grooming and suicide prevention among others.

Last year, the program was selected as the youth-oriented channel of the Presidency’s Unplanned Youth Pregnancy National Plan (Plan Enia). Hablemos de Todo’s website has been visited by 870,000 users, received 14,000+ online consultation requests and has been included in 300,000 laptops distributed at secondary schools by the Ministry of Education.

Acá Estamos (which translates to Here we are) is a program aimed at strengthening local community leaders and grassroots organisations working with youth in settings of extreme vulnerability. It has already reached over 1,770 institutions nationwide, encompassing 350,000 young people living in extreme vulnerability.

Lastly, one of our aims is to engage youth into a reflection process about employment, employability and productive lives. These aims led us to shift the ethos behind our Youth Employment Fairs, which became the Fairs of the Future, adopting the “future of work” perspective widely discussed under the Argentine G20 presidency.

The project, implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Production and Work, breaks with the traditional job fair dynamic to engage young people in a reflection process about their life projects, understanding that professional development can have different forms, including entrepreneurship and self-employment as well as traditional employment relations. The fair provides information, certified trainings and cultural offerings. In 2018, some 13 fairs took place in different cities around the country, with an attendance of 110,000 young people and the participation of 483 strategic allies including companies, national and local ministries, NGOs, unions and youth organisations, among others.

In our first year as INJUVE, our team also delved into new working areas. The cornerstone of this work was the development of a national youth study, the first of its kind, based on a sociology of transitions approach.

Its results reaffirmed our perceptions from two years in the field, and provided us with key insights about young people’s concerns, their views of the state and how to approach them.

Our newest initiatives include launching a series of financial literacy workshops with the Central Bank, and creating a gender parity division to train our staff and establish collaborations with actors like Facebook and Vital Voices. We will reach 2,000 women in vulnerable settings with trainings on the use of digital platforms and entrepreneurship.

Under the Argentine G20 presidency, we teamed up with the Ministry of Education and the G20 Technical Unit to provide secondary schools around the globe with tools for youth to learn about the G20 through a simulation experience. The Model G20 guidance is now available in Spanish and English for uptake.

In 2019, INJUVE will work to deepen its engagement with young people, continuing to work with different Ministries at the national level and local governments, looking to increase the efficiency of the country’s investment in youth policies and, critically, their scalability. — Pedro Robledo & Natalia Herbst

(Picture credit: Flickr/Dafne Mares)