The YOUAccess grant provides flexible funding that allows for risk-taking and a platform for youth ownership of projects. Grant awardees contribute to building family planning champions among policymakers, leaders, organizations, and individuals at national, district, and community levels. The grants offer an opportunity for innovative project development, knowledge sharing, and evidence-building to meet youth contraceptive needs.
With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, PAI selected six youth-led organizations in the Global South, providing capital and seed funding for projects based on strength of application, the feasibility of advocacy opportunities, innovative programmatic design, and demonstrated leadership.
Grant recipients are as follows:
- My Age Zimbabwe Trust is advocating for the provision of two mobile family planning clinics in three IDP camps in the Marondera Rural district.
- Personal Initiative for Positive Empowerment Kenya (PIPE Kenya) is engaging service providers and policy makers to ensure that family planning programs enable young women living with HIV access to contraception.
- Rayons des Initiatives Culturelles, Musicales et des Arts Oraux (RICMAO ASSO) is advocating with national, municipal, and private-sector decision-makers to secure free contraceptives and access to contraceptive information for 2,000 youth in the city of Porto-Novo.
- ZOE-MED Organization is training staff in three clinics in the Northwest region of Cameroon on how to counsel young people with disabilities on family planning and trains young people living with disabilities on their SRHR.
- Association Lead Santé is increasing family planning and reproductive health resources, information, and services for students in three schools in rural Madagascar.
- Women Promotion Centre is pursuing the abolishment of forceful pregnancy tests for girls in 15 schools in the Kibera slum of Nairobi.
Youth Champion Profiles
Mbencho Andrew Millan of ZOE-MED Organization
Maia Freudenberger of Projet Jeune Leader (PJL)