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[Intro music plays] Intro: Welcome to the Cutting Edge Podcast. Brought to you by the GHPOD II project and the USAID Office of PDMS. Cutting edge means: new, new ideas, technology, approaches, hot topics, something innovative. Those ideas, those presentations, adapted for a podcast. --------------------------------------------------------------Mike Myers: I’m Mike Myers from the GHPOD II project. Christiana Mpaka: Hi, my name is Christiana Mpaka and I am with USAID/PDMS. Mike Myers: So, this is our first ever Cutting Edge podcast. Each episode will explore a new idea or approach in USAID’s global health work. You’re going to hear interviews from USAID experts in Washington and the field, combined with audio clips pulled from one of our Cutting Edge Webinars. Today’s episode is called “Positive Youth Development: The Missing Middle”. I’d like to start by introducing you to Mike McCabe: So, I’m Mike McCabe. I’m the Agency Youth Coordinator at USAID. Mike Myers: So, Mike works with USAID staff in Washington and missions around the world to ensure they have the tools they need to improve the quality of program design when working to integrate youth into any of USAID’s program sectors, and to operationalize the USAID 2012 Youth in Development Policy. Mike McCabe: How do they get the tech support and the training they need so that they understand what’s the cutting edge or the state of the field for how young people can be partners in development? Whether it’s in global health, education to employment, or looking at issues of security and civic engagement. Mike Myers: Ok, we have a lot to talk about today and we’re going to try to keep it to under 20 minutes, so let’s get started. [Transition music] Christiana Mpaka: Why are youth critical to our agency goals and specifically for global health? Mike McCabe: Yeah, when we look at the situation in the world today and especially our foreign policy and foreign assistance priorities, it’s hard to deny that youth aren’t at the center of issues of security and safety, and people on the move and migration or in refugee settings. That they’re not at the center of wellness and health in a lot of the fragile environments and communities in which we work. So part of what we’re trying to do at USAID is look at, how do we take advantage of the largest generation of youth in human history and make them partners in the work we’re doing to allow us to meet some of those Sustainable Development Goals more effectively? And more importantly, see them as leaders not only of tomorrow, but of today, and take advantage of their energy, their
connectivity. They have the ability to mobilize very quickly. When we look at Liberia, on the front lines when Ebola broke out, were networks of young people who responded to that. When we look at Nepal, when disaster hits, it was networks of young people. When we look at different humanitarian crises in Central America, young people through the Defense de Civile and Red Cross and Scouts, are out there on the front lines, very early on. So, we need to understand how do we design intentionally to bring in the role of young people. And if we don’t, there's other groups that also understand that, that are willing to take advantage of young people in that way. Mike Myers: So, this reminds me of an interview I did with Chris Miller, the USAID Country Office Director in Turkmenistan. Chris described the impact young people have on USAID's health programming there in Turkmenistan and I want to play a clip of that interview. After you hear Chris, you'll hear a quick clip of one of the youth volunteers. Let's take a listen. Chris Miller: A year on the ground here, my current job, I think the most impressive thing, the thing that stands out to me most is these kids that are involved in a number of our programs- from Junior Achievement, to the "Together for Health" program in particular, some others as well. Just, amazing young people, they’re volunteering. And volunteering is actually kind of a novel, new concept here in Turkmenistan. But these kids like really want to participate. They're like looking for ways that they can contribute. Looking for ways that they can help their peers and help their parents in some cases, help their teachers. And they just do an amazing job in ways that I don't think we could have ever planned for. They create space, create time, in ways that you just can't build into a program. Right, its not included in the program description of these projects, it’s not included in their scope of work. It’s just not possible to capture some of the things these kids are involved in and the ways that they're contributing to Turkmen society. It’s just, it’s amazing to watch them and they're excited and they have more energy than we do and they have better ideas than we do, and we need to follow their lead a lot more and just let them do what they do best. They talk about some of the most sensitive topics, and its sensitive in any setting but its particularly sensitive here in Turkmenistan. They’re talking about tuberculosis. They're talking about HIV. They're talking about AIDS. They're talking about sexually transmitted diseases. These are taboo topics and its just unreal that they're able to do this in public settings. And talk not just freely but in a very educated, well-informed way. Nurgeldi Suleymanov: My name is Nurgeldi Suleymanov. I am a head of volunteers. We can speak with our peers about everything they can say to us. What they can't say to other persons, teachers, or other family, young people. It’s our future and if they will be healthy, our world may be a little bit [more] healthy. It was my dream to help people and I think I can do it now.
Mike Myers: OK, so the energy, connectivity, and ideas that young people bring to the table have a real impact on USAID's work, right. But we’re not always designing program to serve or involve youth in the most effective way. USAID has made real progress in development efforts for children in early stages of life and for young adults that, lets say, drop out of school. But there's a period in between the two that you describe as the "Missing Middle". Can you tell us more about that? Mike McCabe: Yeah, we do a great job at maternal child health and at early grade reading and things in those first few years. And then in education, we try to pick them up once they've dropped out of school at 18 and try to get them into jobs. When we know that every year that we keep a young person in school, we get better health and education and employment outcomes. But we don't have programming outcomes that's hitting on that missing middle. Mike Myers: For more on the missing middle, Amy Uccello, formerly with the Bureau for Global Health as Mike McCabe: the Family Planning and Youth Technical Advisor for the Office of Population and Reproductive Health Mike Myers: picks it up from the Cutting Edge stage. Amy Uccello: What we need to recognize is that there have been significant improvements in infant and child morbidity and mortality over the last 50 years or so. However, the adolescent mortality rates have remained stagnant in the last 50 years. Therefore, what's important in the health space, is that we do not waste the investments that we made in MNCH thus far, only to lose our young people during the adolescent years. HIV rates have tripled for adolescents while they've reduced in other areas. Girls are eight times more likely to be HIV positive. Mike McCabe: That missing middle is where we know that that second burst of brain growth that goes on from 14 to 21 needs that additional stimulation. Otherwise we have an effect that’s called ‘use it or lose it’, where there’s synaptic pruning and we get a lot more prevalence of more of the impulse side of our brain development, rather than the prefrontal cortex- which is what gives our teenagers good judgement. Mike Myers: Right, I want to dive deeper into the adolescent brain because I’m really fascinated by this topic. But I have to be honest, I don’t quite understand it. Synaptic pruning? ‘Use it or lose it’ period of brain development? Let’s go back to Amy Uccello for more on this. Amy Uccello: Teenagers have a very high tolerance for risk. This is also a normal part of their brain development because of the fast movements of the limbic system. But also because of compounding, shifting levels of hormones including dopamine which come along with doing new things and the adrenaline rush that comes from that. This makes adolescents more prone to addiction and to seeking excitement through risky behaviors. From our perspective, positive risk-taking can provide a healthy alternative to dangerous risk behaviors offering that same adrenaline rush. Such as including young people in sports theater or community service. There’s also a period of ‘use it or lose it’ in brain development during the adolescent years. Adolescent brains are becoming more efficient, and specialized. There’s an increase in gray matter followed by a period of pruning, where synapsis and
neurons that are used, get stronger. But those that are not being used wither away and die. Unfortunately, during this critical window of brain development, many youth in the developing world are out of school reducing the potential to take advantage of this critical timeframe. We also know that the brain is extremely mailable during this time and it’s a great period to rebuild from an early childhood trauma or stresses of childhood. Mike McCabe: [background music] Fifteen years ago when I was working in this field, there wasn’t a lot of conversation about adolescent brain development. Today you can’t go to a conference and not hear someone talking about it. But I would challenge us to think beyond the fascination with the adolescent brain development 1.0 where we learn kind of, how does the brain work- in that there’s this second period of growth that goes on from age 14 to about 21 which is very key. And I would challenge us to move to- so what does that mean for how we design programming that responds to that reality? Mike Myers: Can you give me an example of a way that a USAID program is leveraging what we now understand about the adolescent brain? Mike McCabe: A lot of our work on violence prevention in Central America and other places we use both violence interrupters but we also use this model of what we call Slow Thinking, to help young people think through their actions and the consequences before they do it. Because they are in that mode of more impulse dominant behavior. Mike Myers: As we heard from Chris Miller at the beginning of the podcast, we can’t always plan for the impact young people have on our programming. Chris Miller: They just do an amazing job, in ways that I don’t think we could have ever planned for. Mike Myers: But there are ways that USAID intentionally designs programs to harness the energy of young people. The approach and philosophy that the Agency uses is called Positive Youth Development or PYD. For those listening that want to learn more about PYD, you can check out the links that are included in the description of this podcast. For now, Mike, give me a high-level description of USAID’s approach to youth development. Mike McCabe: I often show a visual or carry a Rubik’s cube where I say, we’ve kind of gone from a soccer ball approach- one size fits all. We focus on youth, we focus on their risk factors in one sector, to more of a Rubik’s cube approach where we look at these three different dimensions: One, we’re looking at the stage of development between early adolescence, late adolescence, and emerging adulthood. Then we look at- not just the youth- but the role their family plays, the community, and the systems. And how do we intentionally design the right interventions for each of those levels? And then the third dimension of this is, we can’t just focus on a global health intervention or an employment intervention. We need to understand that young people are going through multiple transitions and have multiple needs so through Youth Power and some of our other mechanisms we’ve been working with Missions to design cross-sectoral projects that really are getting better outcomes for us.
Mike Myers: This is a big benefit of Positive Youth Development. That PYD has cross-sectoral benefits. For more on this, Taly Lind Mike McCabe: our Division Chief at the Cross-Sectoral Programs division within the DCHA Bureau Mike Myers: picks it up from the Cutting Edge stage. Taly Lind: So, one of the things we really want you to come away with, is that PYD achieves multisector outcomes. In other words, if you’re doing this programming correctly, if you strategize correctly, and design correctly, you’ll typically see- or what the evidence has shown us is that the PYD approach can be used to target one primary sector outcome. But often is found to impact positively on another important youth outcome which may or may not have been initially targeted or was really considered secondary. For example, in a crime prevention program, using a PYD approach has been shown to impact both academic skills enhancement and the delay of sexual activity regardless of targeting the youth’s gender or particular ethnic group or in a particular area. Workforce development programs using a PYD approach have seen high outcomes in education levels, and then also healthier livelihoods and gender rights. PYD approaches has been found to impact multi-sector outcomes regardless of the original program goal. And PYD programming understands that youth development outcomes for health, education, workforce development and civic participation are often interconnected. Mike McCabe: We just finished a meta review of Positive Youth Development research in low and middle income countries. They looked at almost 20,000 pieces of grade literature and 105 serious evaluations. And what they found is exactly what Taly said- you design in a way that is both crosssectoral but also recognizing that if you bring in these seven features of positive youth development, you typically are seeing good benefits, both on your primary sector area and then on these secondary sectors. Let me just give one more, quick example. The Somali Youth Leadership Initiative worked in two regions of Somalia on increasing access to secondary education. And what they found when they did the control and the treatment communities was- in the communities where they only provided secondary education access, skills went up and motivation or sense of agency went up. But so did the acceptance of violence as a legitimate tool. When they added the component of youth contribution through civic engagement and community service by those students to the community, violence dropped 16% and the acceptance of violence as a legitimate tool dropped. That’s why when we work with our staff we really look at how are we intentionally designing: asset skill-building, the things that build a sense of agency and empowerment, the opportunity to put those into practice- either civically or economically- and then that supporting environment of a safe space, caring adult or mentor and pro-social norms. {transition music plays} Narrator from a Somali Youth Learners Initiative video on USAID’s YouTube channel: Youth must be considered as a critical partner in peace and development. (background crowd noise plays) Because of SYLI, youth networks now have the platforms to voice their concerns and advocate for positive change so much needed in Somalia. The federal government of Somalia recognizes that we should not only work for young people- we should work with them.
Christiana Mpaka: How can people get involved in PYD? What are some actionable steps? Mike McCabe: Yeah, if I could have people who are on this podcast do two, three things right now. The first thing that I would ask them to do is go to youthpower.org and bookmark it as one of your favorites so it’s up on that bar at the top of your computer. You know, if people were to go there, they would see we have about 18,000 users. 2,500 resources that are categorized by sectors, by areas, by regions, that they can really get benefit from. Second, within youthpower.org which is our public facing site, they can get connected to communities of practice of USAID an implementing partners on youth engagement, youth and gender, youth peace and security and looking at these cross-sectoral areas. So that’d be the second thing. The other thing that I would ask them to do- we just finished what I think is just a fabulous new intranet site for USAID on youth in development programming. We took the best examples we could from our youth points of contact in different missions, and organized them by the program cycle. So it’s easy for staff to go in there and find a good example of a CDCS or a PAD or some of the evidence based tools that we have. So, I would encourage them to go to pages.usaid.gov/youth and you can find that off our intranet site any time. And again, bookmark that and take a few minutes to go through it. Because when we’ve done it with missions, they’re like “oh my gosh, all this stuff is at my fingertips that I didn’t know was there before”. So, we just launched that about two months ago and we’d be glad to work with missions on how to best use that. There’s also a big section in there called ‘What Works’, where we aggregated the best we could find in terms of evidence-based, promising practices by sector and sub-sector to make it easier for folks to say “Hey, what really works in demand-driven youth employment preparation?” Or “What really works in sexual reproductive health with adolescents?” So, they can find that there. The fourth thing that I would say is, consider being a point of contact on youth in development for your bureau or for your mission. You can find a list of who some of those people are at the different missions. But if people were to send me an email at
[email protected] -so its, “mi-Mccabe at usaid.gov, we’re more than glad to have them added to our bi-weekly newsletter that we do of the best resources on youth and development at USAID, our monthly youth and development webinars that we do on promising practices and get them more engaged with us. And then the last thing is, take a look at some of our new tools on- we have a brand-new toolkit on how to measure youth outcomes. We have the indicators, we have the measurement sheets and measurement tools so we make it easy for FSO and FSN staff to really think about-how do I measure this stuff? I would encourage them to contact us, you know, and let us know if we can help them, either virtually or doing, inviting them to some of our five-day trainings that we’re doing all around the world this year. [transition music plays] Mike Myers: Alright, thanks so much for your time, Mike, this has been a pleasure. Mike McCabe: Thank you. [transition music plays] Mike Myers: Hey, thanks for sticking around to the end. This is our first podcast, so we would really love your feedback to help us improve for the next one. Was it too long? Too short? Just right? There’s a link to a survey in the description of this podcast that you can use to let us know what you think. And just a quick plug, we here at GHPOD II have a lot of great professional development
opportunities here at our training space in Crystal City that health sector staff can sign up for free of charge. So, sign up! Alright, that’s it. Take care and I’ll see ya next time.
