NIMD: Youth Democratic Participation

During the period of March 2020 and March 2024, the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy implemented a project called Jovenes D to promote youth civic and political participation while strengthening state actors role and policies to support youth participation. Implemented during difficult international and national context, the project maintained its course on supporting marginalized youth and other under-represented sectors' access and capacity to participate in democratic processes and development of their communities. The project included three main components: training, institutional and organizational strengthening, and dialogue & public policies, which together sought to form new leaderships from under-represented sectors in politics, such as urban and rural youth and women, indigenous peoples, people with disabilities and LGBTIQ people. The project was implemented in Solola, Quiche and Alta Verapaz, and expanded to San Marcos and Huehuetenango during the last 2 years of implementation. Additionally, a fourth component on social audit was added in 2021. The project had three strategic partners during its implementation: Asociacion Alas de Mariposas, Asociacion Civil Red Ciudadana and Centro Carter each with specific thematic expertise required in the project. The project reached 5,693 direct participants between all four components, the majority of them in the age range of 18-30 years of age; 3,876 of the total were women and 2,547 represented indigenous peoples. Component 1 Training and Capacity Building offered diploma courses through NIMD School of Training for Democracy, including Know to Transform, Multiparty Youth, Defend and Resist, plus short training courses on specific issues. The methodology was based on Knowledge Return Actions whereby the trained youth carried out social actions in their communities. The Democracy School also carried out investigations. One important result was offering democracy training to rural youth and women in distant, hard to reach rural settings, when training offer is often available only at capital or departmental level. The conceptual framework implemented by the Democracy School brought current concepts to rural youth, namely "state capture, multidimensional poverty analysis, municipal development, human rights approach", normally more conversed in urban settings among political analysts and commentators, contributing to democratization of knowledge and analysis. 465 young women and men acquired competences to become change agents in their communities through their participation in Democracy School courses, reaching 113% compliance with established goal. A non-planned result was NIMD institutional strengthening: NIMD Guatemala Democracy School now has solid academic offer for democracy training, with materials, procedures, formats and toolboxes. NIMD training offer increased by 200% thanks to Jovenes D. Component 2 on Institutional/Organizational Strengthening sought to support youth and women graduates of the Democracy School and civil society organizations and state institutions responsible for attending youth and women, to support positive change, actions and attention to youth and women. Jovenes D provided support and technical assistance to a) municipalities, legislative and executive state instances, b) youth collectives and organizations, women's organizations, local development councils (COCODES) and c) multiparty participatory spaces. Project target was implementation of 20 Inclusive Initiatives; 27 were implemented, reaching a compliance of 135% of the indicator. In component 3 Dialogue & Public Policy, the aim was to facilitate and contribute to participatory, multisectorial and inter-generational political dialogue to generate strategic political plans, programs and projects in favor of target populations. As a results, public policies on inclusive democracy, promotion of human rights and sustainable development were formulated at central and municipal level, including 5 municipal youth policies, 4 municipal women's policies, 1 municipal policy on education, and 3 departmental agendas on environment and natural resources. National level dialogues include supporting Plan NIM B'E - Political Action of the Indigenous Peoples which brought together 200 indigenous people from 22 departments to identify areas of attention towards strengthening political action by indigenous peoples and leaders, taking first steps to create a School for Political Training of Indigenous Peoples, with technical assistance from the Human Rights Institute of San Carlos University. Indicator for this action line (8 proposals for public policy) was surpassed with 20 proposals prepared and presented, representing a 250% compliance with established indicator. Component 4 on social audit and transparency sought to strengthen citizen participation and capacity for social audit, providing technical assistance to organized transparency groups to improve implementation of actions to guarantee efficient and transparent use of public funds. Technical support to 21 social audits was provided, including 4 social audits by organized youth transparency observatories guided by the Carter Center. 350 people were trained in social audit, 2 networks for social audit were created (one with Collective of Mayan Organizations of Guatemala KOMON MAYAB and one of youth transparency observatories in Alta Verapaz, Quiche, Solola and Chiquimula) The National Network of Transparency Commissions and Collectives included gender and youth commissions in their organizational structure and for the first time, six women were elected to its Board by its National Assembly. Three diploma courses and three short courses were implemented on social audit, access to public information and strategic communication, in coordination with the Carter Center. An unexpected result was the organizational strengthening of NIMD Guatemala office which went through an institutional strengthening process as a result of capacity audit carried out by the embassy prior to signing an agreement with NIMD. The strengthening process was supported by the embassy during a 9 month inception phase. Also, the embassy supported project allowed NIMD to expand its work from political parties to youth collectives and other actors out of Guatemala City where its actions had been limited prior to Jovenes D, providing an opportunity for innovation. NIMD conducted a Mid-Term evaluation in 2023 "Final Report of the Intermediate Evaluation of project Jóvenes D, más desarrollo, más diversidad, más democracia inclusiva" carried out by independent consultant company Agenda 21, S.A. The results of the evaluation were used by partner to precise actions for the last months of the program, and giving input to any future programming by NIMD. The evaluation was unfortunately delayed due to administrative issues and due to negotiations between NIMD and the consulting firm Agenda 21 to come to common understanding of the scope and approach of the evaluation. This delay reduced the impact of the report in terms of possibility to adjust the course of the project. A final evaluation was carried out by consulting group Cardinal, S.A. with final report presented in February 2024. The final evaluation determined that political participation by youth increased by 63% among the sample of project participants againts control group. The project, which was first of its kind for NIMD, produced several recommendations, including the following: 1. Improve selection criteria of participants by incorporating aspects of vulnerability to migration or unemployment; such vulnerability should lead to incentives that address such inequality. 2. Incorporate more beneficiaries with disabilities and continue with the inclusive approach for underrepresented populations and the LGBTIQ community. 3. Modify the indicators to: i) establish goals with absolute values; ii) establish quality indicators, such as the dropout rate. 4. Establish optimized processes in the implementation model. 5. Establish more detailed agreements with partners and, while these allow flexibility, they also clearly define the model to follow and the respective goals. 6. Although there is an M&E system, it is convenient to focus the M&E through a plan that establishes those responsible, resources, times, reports and other elements for the management of said activity. These recommendations will be useful both for NIMD and the embassy when analyzing future intervention proposals.

The program "NIMD: Youth Democratic Participation 2020-2023" is implemented by the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy NIMD in three rural provinces of Guatemala (Solola, Quiche and Alta Verapaz). The Swedish contribution to the program is 39 500 000 SEK.  The main objective of the program is to form new leadership for democratic participation from underrepresented and marginalized groups, such as urban and rural youth and women, indigenous youth, youth with different capacities and LGBTIQ+ youth, through development of skills and competences that allow them to participate in decision-making spaces and become agents of change towards more inclusive democracy. The program has three main components: 1) Training and capacity building; 2) Institutional and organizational strengthening; and 3) Dialogue and public policy related to youth and women.