Background
The World Bank Youth Forum is an immediate outcome from the Video Conference on the World Bank Africa Action Plan. Consequent upon the need to deepen youth involvement in the Africa Action Plan development process, the World Bank Nigeria Country office decided to dedicate the Video Conference in Nigeria to providing space for the opinions of young people to be captured in the AAP process. At the VC meeting, youth leaders present had the unique opportunity to engage the World Bank Nigeria Country Director, at the brief interaction, he expressed that beyond the AAP process, the youth leaders present should come up with at least 3 things the World Bank in Nigeria should do for youth. In response to the challenge posed, the youth leaders brainstormed on various issues and came up with the following:
1. The World Bank should have a quarterly forum for youth leaders where they can interact and work through on issues.
2. The World Bank should encourage youth-friendly centers where youths can be counseled on youth related health and other social challenges eg. HIV/AIDS, STDs, sexual orientation.
3. The World Bank should establish a development market place / entrepreneurial idea bank for youths in Nigeria. We have a small grant programs that we can do a youth related CSO’s to do a theme
4. The World Bank should empower youth and women in Agriculture through the related government agencies e.g. NDE and support the sector with a STEP B strategy with a strong monitoring and evaluation provision
5. The World Bank should provide and encourage other development partners to increase on the quality and quantity of scholarships for youths in areas of science and technology
6. The World Bank should commission studies on youth expectations in terms of good governance, accountability and youth mainstreaming into policy and decision making processes.
In his response, the World Bank Country Director accepted to convene a quarterly youth forum but which will discuss specific issues and come up with a workable action plan, and he made commitment to host the first meeting in July and also be physically present at the meeting.
Objectives:
1. To ensure youth mainstreaming into the Africa Action Plan consultation, development and implementation process
2. To provide advisory and technical support for the World Bank on youth development in Nigeria
3. To provide youth leaders a platform for continuous engagement with the World Bank and ensure youth participation at all levels.
Meetings
The World Bank Youth Forum would meet 4 times in a year. With the inaugural meeting scheduled to hold on July 14, 2010. All meetings would focus on a specific thematic areas. The initial thematic areas would be selected from the recommendations presented to the World Bank Country Director at the Video Conference on AAP.
Membership
All the youth participants at the VC AAP meeting will automatically become foundation members of the World Bank Youth Forum. Subsequently, the forum will expand to include other youth leaders from across the nation who meets a set of criteria that will include the following:
· Individual members who must belong to a registered youth focused organizations
· Membership is open to youth leaders between the ages of 18 and 35years old in consonance with the National Youth Policy
· At least, a minimum of 30% of members should be between the ages of 15 and 25 years
· Members must possess requisite skills and knowledge and must be active within the workings of the forum
· Overall membership will be restricted to between 50 – 60 members
Governance
The World Bank Youth Forum will be coordinated by a team of 5 persons who will be responsible for organizing the quarterly meetings, providing continuous engagement with the World Bank and ensuring that members remain active and committed in between meetings especially in following up actions emanating from all meetings. The 5-Man Governance team shall include:
I. Coordinator
II. Deputy Coordinator and Head of Strategy
III. Forum Secretary and Communications executive
The forum would also be supported by a three-man advisory team comprising of:
I. A representative from the World Bank (Mr. Obadiah)
II. Professor Ibidapo Obe
III. Kenneth Owumi (Coordinator, Youth Development and Peace Network)
The Advisory team shall be present at forum meetings when necessary and would provide advisory support to the forum Governance team and the forum as a whole.
The Forum
The forum meetings, held quarterly would over the first 4 editions focus on the following areas:
· Youth and Governance
· Youth and the World Bank small grants for NGOs
· Youth and Health
· Youth and Education
The Inuagural meeting which will hold on July 14, 2010 will focus on youth and governance and would take the following format:
1. A welcome message from the World Bank Country Director
2. An introductory statement from the forum coordinator
3. A presentation from the World Bank Governance team on their portfolio in Nigeria and how it affects youth
4. Questions and Answers
5. Developing an action plan
6. Presenting the action plan to the Country Director
7. Wrap-up
