• Peer-to-peer education
• Interactive youth club network
• Integration of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) education with life skills training and income generating opportunities for young people
• Access to SRH information, services and supplies
• Replicable, sustainable and adaptable approach
• Youth-led and needs-based community activities
• Linkages with local administrative and community structures
• Interactive website (www. youth-to-youth.org)
• Use of mobile services (DSW youth trucks and VCT truck) to provide SRH information and services to young people in remote areas

How does the Youth-to-Youth Initiative empower young people in practice?

• Enabling youth-led peer education
  Selected youth club members participate in peer education, SRHR, lifeskills, club management and leadership trainings. The acquired knowledge and skills help them to successfully manage their clubs and to provide quality youth-friendly SRHR information and educational materials on issues such as contraception, family planning, HIV/Aids, gender, and maternal health in a confidential setting to their peers.
• Creating community support for youth
  Youth clubs engage in community outreach activities designed to raise awareness, change attitudes and strengthen community life. These activities include youth-led edutainment (music, drama, dance) shows, environmental work and community services as well community dialogue and advocacy meetings targeting local decision-makers and community members.
• Strengthening youth-friendly and quality sexual and reproductive health services
  Trained peer educators and peer counsellors in the youth clubs offer contraceptives, individual SRH-counselling services, HIV/Aids testing and counselling or home-based care to their peers in a confidential setting. Moreover, referral services between youth clubs and health facilities are set up to ensure that young people with SRH-related problems are referred from clubs to health service providers for respective treatment. Health personnel receive training in order to ensure that these services are youth-friendly.
• Enhancing the social and economic development of young people
  Trainings provided to young people on entrepreneurship, business, and resource mobilisation skills enable them to develop, set up and maintain income generating activities. Club members learn how to sustain youth club activities in a sustainable way and how to secure small loans. Strong clubs and Youth Empowerment Centres often become youth-led community organisations and mobilise diverse resources. Regular exchange meetings among clubs enable young people to share their experiences, problems, and good practices with other members of the Y2Y network.

What has the Youth-to-Youth Initiative achieved?

• Creation of a network of over six hundred youth clubs in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.
• Training of more than 20,000 peer educators who have passed on their knowledge to more than 15 million young people.
• Distribution of more than 18 million youth-friendly educational materials and 15 million condoms.
• 14,500 youth trained in entrepreneurship skills.
• In Ethiopia, awareness of more than 150,000 girls and community members has been raised on the causes, treatment and prevention of fistula since 2006.
• In Kenya, more than 160,000 young people and community members got tested for HIV and made use of mobile test clinic services in the framework of a three-year EU funded project alone.
• In Tanzania, more than 9,000 young people in remote and rural areas have been reached with comprehensive SRH information with the DSW youth truck since 2007.
• In Uganda, awareness of more than 20,000 parents and community members about sexual and reproductive health has been raised since 2001.