Youth Empowerment
An attempt to work with student representatives of various student organizations for sustainable peace and democracy can be seen as a model to empower the youth in political and democratic processes by utilizing their potentials, strengths and resilience. Empowerment is a continuous process and it should not be a one time intervention. This is the right time for the youth of Nepal to seek an ongoing platform for empowerment. Till date AfP Nepal has provided sufficient opportunities for the student representatives of various student organizations by focusing on a twofold approach - 'learn and practice'.

Through the empowerment of the youths, they can play an active role in the democracy of Nepal.   AfP Nepal believes that youths are vital assets for leading the society in the positive direction.  The youth of Nepal face a lot of challenges today, such as illiteracy, traumas left by violent conflict, unemployment and limited participation in the society.

AfP Nepal will support the development of programs that assist youth to build hopes, realistic aspirations and acquire the skills and resources to be self-sustaining. AfP Nepal will also maintain a consistent public awareness campaign focussed on the factual status of youth, their points of vulnerability and their developmental needs.

Advocacy and Lobbying
Networking and coalition building is another strategy of AfP Nepal that will link the grass-root communities to the policy making levels.  The major focus of this strategy will be to work with the activists and professional groups and engage in key areas of interest for collective advocacy and establish strong connections between the at grassroots, intermediary, national and international levels.

AfP Nepal will facilitate well informed dialogue among key policy/decision makers aimed at youth empowerment and inclusion. AfP Nepal, will adapt a participatory process, where all youths of Nepal can exercise and voice their rights.  AfP Nepal will also advocate and lobby to ensure the rights of the youths.

AfP Nepal envisions to facilitate interaction between and amongst the policy makers/implementers and the target youth communities. The main programme area of focus of AfP Nepal includes identification of key policy issues in close partnership with community and local partners; implementation of multi-pronged policy advocacy agenda (campaigns, collective expression etc.); facilitation of  discussion groups on youth  related issues and presentation of the findings and resolutions to the national working teams.

Research, Documentation and Publication
Research, documentation and publication are other strategies of AfP Nepal to successfully implement its Strategic Plan. Research on the pertinent issues of the youth,  such as mapping overall youth status in Nepal through the benchmark survey, research on war affected youth in Nepal and youth reflection in the constitution – building process are the issues directly affecting the youths.  Documentation of the profiles of the political youth organizations of Nepal and the cases of Human Rights violations will be strengthened, which will contribute in a multiple way:  the creation and management of a body of knowledge, both for AfP Nepal organizational understanding and for establishing Resource Centre as well as for providing evidence –based advocacy.

AfP Nepal will also disseminate the publications to make it widely available to all the stakeholders. In order to do this, AfP Nepal will produce copies which will be made available to the libraries, the different students and youth organizations, and colleges and universities. Interested youth will also get access to these publications.  Publication of various materials such as press statements, research and survey reports and IEC materials and journals and their wider circulation will contribute to raise awareness and sensitize the stakeholders on contemporary youth issues.

In order to ensure that  the pertinent youth issues get priority at all levels, AfP Nepal will train staff, members, or volunteers about successful lobbying techniques; review context and strategies for movement building and collective organising and obtain key areas for collective advocacy and activism at all levels; and engage and influence political and other decision making structures and processes for instilling the transformative youth agenda into the leadership positions by organizing collective campaigns on specific social issues impacting on youth at local, national, regional and global levels.

Networking, Linkages and Coordination
AfP Nepal will coordinate closely with other relevant institutions such as the Ministry of Youth and Sports, National Planning Commission (NPC), civil society organizations and their networks and the media. AfP Nepal also envisions facilitating interaction between and amongst these organizations to give a united voice for the empowerment of youth.  AfP Nepal will coordinate closely with the district level NGOs to act as bridge between the grassroots and the centre. AfP Nepal will be coordinating with the local NGOs, Community Based Organizations (CBOs), Free Student Unions, political youth and student organizations’ district committees, district-level student and youth leaders, and local authorities.

Gender Mainstreaming and Social Inclusion
Main challenges in gender mainstreaming and social inclusion are cultural customs, discriminatory practices, gender stereotypes, prevalence of gender based violence and the overall political, economic and social processes. The main purpose of gender mainstreaming is to ensure that youth women’s issues and concerns are addressed and taken into consideration as is done with men’s issues. AfP Nepal will take into account gender and social inclusion in all processes and substances of its work. Internally, it will take all possible measures to ensure that there is proportionate gender balance in its General Membership and its Executive Committee. AfP Nepal will also take steps to ensure that gender mainstreaming is inherent in its hiring practices for its administrative body and programme component at all levels. AfP Nepal will also try to ensure gender mainstreaming in all of its partner organizations in the central as well as district levels.  Furthermore, affirmative steps will be taken to ensure equal representation of women in all programs and activities – more to promote women’s leadership in decision making and implementation processes as well as to benefit women from what AfP Nepal works on. Fair and equal representation and leadership of youth women will cut across all policies, programs and activities of AfP Nepal. AfP Nepal will make sustained efforts to promote and adopt social inclusion in its internal as well as external dimensions. Internally, inclusive policies and systems will be established to ensure inclusion of youth from diverse sectors (caste, ethnicity, region, gender etc.). AfP Nepal and its partner organisation will also focus on bringing together on board youth from all those diverse sectors in all levels of decision-making processes and operational steps. Gender and social inclusion policy of AfP Nepal would be helpful to provide guidelines in this regard.

Conflict Sensitivity
Strengthening democratic institutions and processes in post-conflict situations in a viable and sustainable manner requires to be combined with peace-building and/or conflict transformation focus. Post conflict recovery entails the struggle for power, which generates human passions that are liable to challenge peace and stability. Every ‘building block’ of democracy can also contain the seeds of violence. Political parties can focus on fighting each other rather than pursuing the broader interests of society. Transitional processes involving major changes in the power structure and a major reshuffling of the social order are also conducive to violence. Constitutions can be imposed on unwilling minorities. And youth empowerment can start a feeling of adultism among the seniors. AfP Nepal understands such challenges and has adopted conflict mainstreaming as one of its cross-cutting issues. As a result, conflict mainstreaming will be included in all programmatic initiatives. AfP Nepal seeks to strengthen the ‘conflict transformation’ capacity of its partner organizations and the beneficiaries and to reduce the potential for violent confrontation by including peace building and conflict prevention mechanisms as cross cutting issues of all of our program activities.

Conflict mainstreaming involves, among others:

1. Understanding the context at the district level in which AfP Nepal works;
2. Understanding the interaction between the context and the intervention; and

Acting upon the understanding of context, intervention and the interaction between the two in order to avoid negative impacts and maximise positive outcomes.