| Grant Profile: |
| Project Title: |
North Caucasus Youth Empowerment and Security Grant |
| PCF/LICUS/SPF: |
PCF |
Status: |
Open |
| File Number: |
323
| Region: |
ECA |
| Sector: |
Health and other social services |
Country: |
Russia |
| FY approved: |
2006 |
Grant Theme : |
Social dev/gender/inclusion |
| Keyword(s): |
Civil society / NGOs;Children and youth;Conflict prevention |
Approved Amount: |
$2,121,735.00 |
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Grant Recipient:
Ministry of Youth, Sport and Tourism, Republic of Ingushetia, Russian Federation |
Grant Purpose:
This grant aims to empower and enhance the security of at-risk youth of different ethnic, religious and linguistic backgrounds and their communities in the North Caucasus. The target areas for this project are the republics of Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria. Grant activities are designed for two target youth groups: adolescents from 14 to 18 years and youth 19 to approximately 25 years old, with gender-sensitive modules for each age sub-group.
Programming for young women will be especially crucial in several republics given the limited opportunities for young women to take part in social activities outside of school and family.
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Grant Activities:
The main components of this project are:
Component 1: Development of community-based, multi-purpose youth centers
The project will support a prototype youth center in a high density, poor, peri urban area in Nesterovskaya in Ingushetia. An additional youth center location will be identified in another North Caucasus republic. In addition, two local NGOs will be selected, one for each Republic, to support the youth center programs through additional community youth activities, wider outreach, and engagement of volunteers. The youth centers’ staff and volunteers, as well as the NGOs’ members will receive additional training and support to strengthen their knowledge base on youth programming. As the development of the center progresses, they will ensure greater participation and involvement of community members in their daily activities, especially local authorities, parents, teachers, the local business sector, and the media.
The youth centers will focus on four core programs:
(1) Life skills development
(2) Information technology
(3) Language skills
(4) Livelihood skills and income generation.
Component 2: Trans-Caucasus Peace and Tolerance Program
This component will explore and support opportunities for youth and youth stakeholders in the Northern Caucasus to become assets for enhancing social cohesion and preventing conflict. The component will support a competitive grant program that focuses on the implementation of concrete joint activities by young people in the North Caucasus, which will have multiplying effects. The grant program will be organized by national and local NGOs, and recipients will be selected competitively through annual public calls. The grant scheme will also promote partnerships among youth NGOs, and between the NGOs and the local governments and other opinion makers in the North Caucasus.
Projects and activities under the following core priorities will be considered for funding.
(1) Youth information and communication programs including joint TV programs produced by young people for peace and tolerance using radio, television, and cassette programming as well as print media and materials to highlight the diversity of the North Caucasus region and its traditional values of tolerance.
(2) Joint summer programs and student work brigades for North Caucasus young people, NGOs and youth workers; other inter-ethnic, inter-republic youth gatherings and social cohesion activities, such as workshops, conferences, trainings, camps, and social, arts, cultural and sporting events and exchange visits.
(3) Training and capacity building for opinion makers on peace and tolerance: the facilitation of seminars and workshops for community youth and religious leaders (e.g., imams, orthodox priests, etc.), journalists, teachers, government officials, civil society, and other opinion shapers. Included among these activities will be conflict resolution and mediation trainings.
(4) Inter-university peace and tolerance program for students and teachers from five North Caucasus republics (Ingushetia, North Osetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia and Stavropol).
Component 3: Youth Fund
A small youth fund will be established that will be instrumental in exposing the Youth Ministry to new means of funding innovative youth programming and in increasing linkages between the Ministries and civil society organizations working on youth programming. The youth fund will have two funding windows:
(1) Small grants for young entrepreneurs in Ingushetia and other North Caucasus republics;
(2) Small grants for NGOs working on youth programming.
Component 4: Capacity-building for youth-related ministries
Activities for this component include:
(1) Set-up of a Project Implementation Unit within UNICEF that will include representatives of the Youth Ministry of Ingushetia to insure capacity building of the Ministry;
(2) Capacity-building for the Youth Ministry which will include: (a) a functional diagnostic on staffing of the Ministry in Ingushetia as a complement to the World Bank work on governance; (b) budget planning and budget development training; (c) study tour to Macedonia and Kosovo; (d) annual cross-regional conferences; (e) capacity building for municipal level youth and (related) municipal officials Ingushetia; (f) information and resource access of the Youth Ministry in Ingushetia, and (g) GDLN facility for the Ingushetia Ministry of Youth, Sports and Tourism.
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News:
In September 2004, more than 300 people, most of which children, died in a terrorist attack on a school in Beslan, North Ossetia. The tragedy bought renewed attention to the North Caucasus region and highlighted the need for promoting peace and tolerance in the region.
The World Bank has funded the United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to run the The North Caucasus Youth Empowerment and Security Project as a key initiative to focus on youth - one of the most vulnerable and yet resourceful groups in the North Caucasus. The project promotes the idea that young people are significant human capital for their peers, families, communities and regions. Research and practice have proved that youth represent one of the key resources that can lead to positive social, political and economic advances through their active participation in the development processes of their societies.
In spite of their potential, young people worldwide are still falling through the cracks of public policy. As a result, youth poverty, unemployment and exclusion are widespread and increasing, and youth are exposed to numerous risks: dropping from school, gender inequalities, violence, drug abuse, trafficking, and extremism, among others.
The North Caucasus, in particular, is home of a large youth population, reaching 40 percent of the total population in places such as Ingushetia. The region has the highest rate of jobless youth in the country, ranging from two to seven times the national average of 10 percent. The region is also home of some of the poorest people in the Russian Federation. Poverty levels go beyond 40 percent in Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Dagestan. Poverty, combined with unemployment, disillusionment, crime, ethnic and religious tensions, and large proportions of at-risk youth, has been part of the larger picture of conflict and violence in the region for years.
The grant funding provided by the World Bank to UNICEF for the North Caucasus Youth Empowerment and Security Project aims to address these challenges. It supports a comprehensive approach to the empowerment of youth in the North Caucasus which rests on the idea that peace goes hand in hand with young people’s personal and economic development. The objective of the project is thus two-fold: to provide grounds for economic development and peace in the region, and an opportunity for young people to be agents of positive change. The goal is to enhance the security of at-risk youth of different ethnic and religious backgrounds in the North Caucasus republics by a series of activities focused specifically on their development. These include building the capacity of youth ministries, providing young people with community-based youth-friendly activities, and promoting peace and tolerance initiatives. It is expected that these will provide young people in the North Caucasus with safe spaces for learning, complementary to the formal school system, as well as opportunities for peaceful interaction, income generation, development of leadership skills, and participation in community life.
Mobilizing young people and local stakeholders to take a lead in developing youth centers and their programs is one of the most notable achievements of the project so far. UNICEF has encouraged young people in the region to join forces with the Youth Councils and Youth Committees in the Government and NGOs, preparing plans for the establishment of youth spaces and a sustainable peace and tolerance program in the region. The development of communication strategies for these centers and capacity building in peace and tolerance for more than 450 young leaders from eight republics have so far contributed to these objectives.
Small grants made available by the program are expected to provide young entrepreneurs with capital, so that they can start their own micro-enterprises. Additionally, grants to NGOs working on youth programs will support activities aimed at providing young people with life and livelihood skills, and income generation opportunities. More trainings for youth councils and committees and young people themselves, meetings among stakeholders in the different republics, peace camps and marches, and TV programs will provide a wide-reaching forum for implementation of the program in the North Caucasus.
The peace and development initiative is implemented by UNCIEF, based on extensive research of the needs of young people in the North Caucasus, and uses lessons learned from successful youth programs supported by the World Bank in other conflict-affected regions.
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