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Youth Development Network (YDN) is a national network of youth development organisations operating in South Africa. These organisations are Establishment for Comprehensive Youth Development (ECYD), SAYWA, Junior Achievement South Africa (JASA), Koinonia, School Leavers Opportunity Training (SLOT) and South African Association of Youth Clubs (SAAYC).
The YDN was established in 1998 to explore ways of increasing the impact of youth development programmes, sharing information and best practices amongst the member organisations, securing resources to support youth development programmes and advocating for the interests of young people. A priority for the YDN is to put youth and youth issues on the national agenda. The YDN member organisations run skills training, youth entrepreneurship and community development programmes to this effect.
The YDN believes that an integrated development approach is the most appropriate strategy to address the current needs of young people in South Africa. Integrated Youth Development (IYD) is premised on the understanding that young people have a range of needs that youth programmes should aim to address (directly or through partnerships). The IYD also argues that young women and men have similar and different needs. It is therefore important for youth development programmes to take into account the different needs of young women and men, so that all young people are given the opportunity to develop to their full potential.
The YDN also recognises the historical and present injustices against women in South Africa. While the more blatant discrimination against women that prevailed in the past has been removed, structural barriers still exist that prevent women from achieving the substantive equality that the Constitution guarantees them. As an organisation committed to social justice the YDN recognises that gender is socially constructed and that presently this construct leads to a skewed power relationship is favour of men.
The YDN believes that men and women are equal and should strive for a non-sexist society in which both play an equal role.
Youth Development Programmes are a microcosm of society. What happens in communities and society at large is exhibited in youth development programmes. Unless there is a deliberate effort to change these patterns of behaviour, the traditional, unequal roles of women and men are perpetuated in youth development programmes.
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