Youth Power Toolkit: A Guide For Facilitating and Promoting Gender Equality

Co-created with and for youth, this manual contains everything you need to facilitate peer-to-peer processes in communities and schools that challenge harmful gender norms and promote relationships based on equality.

Who is this toolkit for? Every young person and teenager who feels the spark to create a better world.

This toolkit is aimed at young people who have minimal information and training on comprehensive sexuality education or on the prevention of gender-based violence. It can also be used by organizations working with youth to promote greater agency in their actions as peer-to-peer facilitators.

The toolkit  is intended to provide all the information necessary for young people to facilitate actions that promote gender equality, and can be used to design and guide debates, reflections, analysis, and other methodologies that help promote the questioning of harmful gender stereotypes.

The contribution and novelty of this toolkit is that it was co-created with and for young people, considering the specific needs, fears and concerns that youth facilitators feel when trying to generate change in their surroundings. In this sense, the messages, the language, the processes and the design of the manual centers young people, their views and inspirations.

Contents of the Toolkit

The toolbox is divided into four chapters:

1. Chapter 1: Power
   Contains all concepts related to gender equality and nonviolence. By knowing the concepts well, a youth facilitator feels more confident in his or her facilitation. 
2. Chapter 2: Methodology and facilitation skills
   Recommendations on the best methodologies to use in sensitization and transformation processes, and tips  that will help youth facilitators overcome any fears or doubts they may have while facilitating a workshop or an action.
3. Chapter 3: What are participatory methods and educational techniques?
   An explanation of different methods and techniques that, based on evidence, can help to generate questioning of stereotypes among peers.
4. Chapter 4: Activities you can use to become a power facilitator
   A detailed step-by-step guide of six activities that can get youth facilitators started and promote change in their communities, peer groups or schools.

The toolkit was co-created by “Jóvenes Power,” a youth group formed by Pasos & Huellas, Nia Kali, Mi Cometa (youth organizations in Guayaquil, Ecuador), CEPAM Guayaquill, and Equimundo as part of the Feminist Futures Free from Violence project coordinated by Fos Feminista.