Integrating Youth into Mainstream Community Development through Community-Based Planning

Abstract

The youth constitute a significant proportion of Zimbabwe’s population. Despite their significance in numbers, they continue to be marginalised in mainstream planning, decision-making and implementation processes of local development interventions. This study explored the utilisation of community-based planning as a tool for integrating the youth into local development through an action research process. Two research questions are dealt with: what are the essential activities for implementing a youth-friendly community-based planning process? And, what are the impacts of engaging the youth in community-based planning? The results indicated that the key tenets of such a process include local awareness raising, district level engagement, local level institutional functionality assessment, community youth mapping, and intensive planning and community feedback meetings. Impacts of integrating youths into community-based planning include institutionalisation of youth-sensitive planning at district level, improved cohesion by the youth from various political divides, enthusiasm by youths in ensuring incorporation of youth-related issues in ward plans, and renewed vigour by the youth to participate in local development activities. The study recommends youth-sensitive community-based planning as an approach for mainstreaming the youth into community development programmes.