Tool: Possible programme entry points for the Adolescent Kit

You can use the tools and activities in the Adolescent Kit to strengthen both formal and non-formal programmes that focus on improving children’s or adolescents’ education and learning. For example, you can integrate activities and tools into:

• School classes on literacy, life skills, social studies, guidance counselling or art;
• Extra-curricular activities such as after-school clubs or arts programmes;
• Non-formal education programmes, such as life skills, peer-to-peer, mentoring and tutoring schemes, which may take place outside of the classroom in community centres, NGOs or village councils.

Activities and tools in the Adolescent Kit can be used in child protection programmes, particularly to build on (or establish new) initiatives that focus on improving adolescent girls’ and boys’ psychosocial wellbeing and resilience. This includes:

• Child Friendly Spaces
• Child participation and child resilience projects;
• Children, adolescent, or youth clubs, organisations or committees;
• Community child protection committees or networks.

The activities and tools in the Adolescent Kit can help adolescents to explore and understand the conflicts that affect them, foster positive connections with adults, contribute to their communities and learn inclusive, respectful ways of working with others. This makes the Adolescent Kit a good fit for peacebuilding education and advocacy programmes that specifically target children and young people.

This includes:

• Initiatives that focus on building knowledge, attitudes and skills that can help adolescents to resolve conflict and build peace in their communities;
• Peace or mediation clubs;
• Community development/service projects;
• Interfaith/intergenerational initiatives.

The tools and activities in the Adolescent Kit can be integrated into youth development programmes that focus on empowering adolescent girls and boys. For example:

• Peer-to-peer and youth resilience initiatives;
• Youth clubs and centres;
• Community development/service projects;
• Mentoring and tutoring schemes.

You can enhance sports, arts and recreation programmes in humanitarian settings by using the resources in the Adolescent Kit to add an additional focus on arts and innovation. For example, you can use the activities and tools in:

• Initiatives that focus on sports, games, physical exercise and recreation;
• Community art, theatre, and street drama projects;
• Projects that support children or adolescents to express themselves through art, music, dance, and drama.

The approaches and activities in the Adolescent Kit can help adolescents to set up their own clubs or initiatives (or to strengthen their existing ones), by supporting them to work in participatory, inclusive ways, empowering them to express themselves, and helping them to address challenges. These include:

• Child/adolescent clubs;
• Child protection/child rights/education/peace committees;
• Child/adolescent led initiatives that focus on community development, disaster risk reduction and humanitarian response.

You can use the activities and approaches in the Adolescent Kit to complement or strengthen the focus on adolescents in nearly any programme. Areas of particular concern to adolescent girls and boys may include:

• Reproductive health
• HIV/AIDS
• Gender equality, women’s empowerment and gender based violence
• Mine action
• Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH)
• Nutrition
• Health
• Disaster risk reduction
• Vocational training and economic empowerment

Note: The resources in the Adolescent Kit are designed to support adolescents’ development of competencies – essential skills they need to engage positively with the world around them and pursue their own priorities. If a goal of your programme is to promote adolescents’ knowledge of information related to the topics above, find and integrate educational materials to complement the resources offered in the kit. The Standards, Guidance and Resources section of the Foundation Guidance offers some additional educational resources that may be useful for programmes focused on some of these topics.