USAID/ Dominican Republic Youth Led Activity
More than half of the population in the Dominican Republic is under 30 and one-third is between the ages of 10-24. These young people have limited work and educational opportunities due to the lack of integration and coordination of youth-friendly services and policies.
The challenges Dominican youth face include crime and violence; discrimination based on gender, disability and LGBTQI+ status; high rates of teenage pregnancies; substance abuse; poor mental health; lack of documentation; and lack of job. For example, 40 percent of students drop out of school before eighth grade and youth between the ages of 15 to 29 account for 41 percent of all homicide victims.
Despite challenges to security and education, promising opportunities for positive development and economic growth exist. Research into youth violence prevention has increased significantly during the last decade, specifically with evidence of success for positive youth development and cross-sectoral integration.
USAID's Youth-Led Activity
To boost these efforts, USAID awarded ENTRENA S.R.L. the Youth Led Activity (YLA), aimed at reducing youth crime and violence in the Dominican Republic by engaging with youth-led and youth-serving organizations to generate cross-sectoral, positive youth development outcomes.
YLA programming will be driven by the Positive Youth Development Framework, and evidence from the youth violence prevention field to support approximately 20,000 young people to thrive economically, socially, and civically, while strengthening enabling environments around them.
As a sub to ENTRENA, AIR is YLA’s learning and resource partner, providing technical assistance in building capacity with a specific focus on Monitoring, Evaluation, Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting. of those youth-serving and youth-led organizations which are implementing YLA programs. We will use a capacity-strengthening approach to foster sustainable MECLA capabilities of the multiple implementing partners on MELRD components. We are supporting the design, analysis, and dissemination of results of baseline and endline studies capturing perceptions of youth crime and violence, and resources available in the project’s target communities.
AIR has also conducted a MECLA foundations training for the project’s local youth-serving partner organizations, orienting them to the project MECLA approach and tools, and has provided extensive guidance to ENTRENA on the selection and customization of tools to measure youth resilience and risk factors, as well as support for analysis of performance monitoring data. AIR conducted a data quality assessment of ENTRENA’s monitoring system and is collaboratively developing a MECLA capacity strengthening plan.
