The Young Leaders Alliance Forum
The Young Leaders Alliance Forum, funded by the International Republican Institute (IRI), aimed to build the capacity of aspiring and current political stakeholders in crafting policies, engaging citizens in participative leadership, fostering bipartisan collaboration, and driving change in the communities they served.
The training, conducted over three months with a total of 24 contact hours, explored themes such as governance structures, participative leadership, financial management, and policy development. The curriculum comprised two components—training and mentorship—specifically designed for a target group of 50 young leaders aged 21 to 40.
_0.png)
Caribbean Youth Fellowship II Programme
The Caribbean Youth Fellowship, funded by the International Republican Institute (IRI), is designed to empower and prepare young leaders for effective leadership roles. The 16-week programme focused on key areas such as policy development and advocacy, governance structures and analysis, and community engagement initiatives. The unique approach included facilitated seminars, workshops, guided discussions, learning-by-doing creative activities, field trips, and awareness campaigns/public debates.
The project's main objectives were to:
- Equip youth with the hard and soft skills to be effective leaders and implement community engagement/initiatives.
- Enable youth to develop and start implementing community engagement initiatives or “action plans” per country around the thematic topics.
- Facilitate teamwork to build sense of innovation, creativity and synergy.
R.E.A.L. M.E.
The R.E.A.L. M.E. Project focused on improving the psycho-social environment of youth aged 13 to 18 years old. We addressed this through facilitated arts and culture workshops aimed at providing skills and critical knowledge related to wellness and well being. The Art and Culture Youth Club sessions used guided discussions, interactive activities, art, music, drama and dance to teach aspects of wellness and well being, outlined in the R.E.A.L. M.E. acronym, specifically
- Relational health;
- Emotional health;
- Attitudes;
- Lifestyle;
- Mental health and
- Economic/education.
Our hope is that these skills and knowledge learned throughout the project can be used in multiple life domains and could, in tandem with appropriate follow up and complementary interventions, have a long-term impact on the youths.
The project was funded by grants from the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) for Waterford High School and the United States Embassy in Kingston for Papine High School, each involving around 30 students.
