AMPLIFY- Platform For Youth Knowledge, And Advocacy

AMPLIFY- Platform for Youth Knowledge, and Advocacy

Donor: U.S. Embassy in Albania
October 2023 - September 2024

Project Goal: The purpose of this project is to build agency for data-driven youth mainstreaming in Albanian policymaking processes and institutions.

Project Description: Amplify is a platform of knowledge creation and advocacy that fosters the space for young people to not only react, but rather proactively think and try to orient the public discourse on topics such as democratic processes, governance, and sustainable development. Six young people will be able to do data-driven advocacy by reaching out to their peers, universities, traditional decision-making actors such as Parliamentary commissions, public institutions, the private sector, media or traditional civil society organizations. They will be mentored to acquire the necessary skills, hence forming a cohort of young people who are upstanders, who inspire, and who may act as role models to the youth who are apathetic.

Therefore, the project will serve a triple function: generate information and knowledge by young people that can be utilized to develop recommendations for concrete actions; increase youth-advocacy initiatives and channels building upon such recommendations; increase young people’s trust in democratic processes in Albania and their level of political participation by assisting in the construction of internal norms and practices that can be transformed into long-term democratic habits that affect change. In addition, it will contribute to bridging generational divides and facilitating intergenerational dialogue on critical issues.

The platform will not only create an enabling environment for youth to generate and advocate ideas but will inspire them to make a difference based on reliable data and scientific-based policymaking. AMPLIFY will include various focus groups in Tirana and two other cities of Albania; three policy papers produced by the young advocates; a dynamic advocacy campaign involving meetings with public institutions and; a forum of solutions in September 2024.