SYNC Initiative – Strengthening Youth-Led Networks’ Capacities in Eastern and Southern Africa

Deadline: 9-May-25

Are you a youth-led network driving change in HIV, SRHR, and rights in your community? If your answer is yes, then here’s your opportunity to level up your leadership, grow your impact, and strengthen your organisation! Apply for the SYNC Initiative – Strengthening Youth-Led Networks’ Capacities now!

The SYNC (Strengthening Youth-Led Networks Capacities) Initiative is a bold, youth-centred effort to power up youth-led networks across Eastern and Southern Africa.

Led by the UNITED! Movement, in partnership with Y+ Global, AfriYAN, UNICEF ESARO, UNFPA ESARO, and UNAIDS ESARO. SYNC provides tailored capacity assessments, co-designed development roadmaps, mentorship, training, and/or grants/seed funding to help youth-led organisations grow stronger, more sustainable, and more impactful.

The UNITED! Movement through Y+ Global and AfriYAN seeks to provide intensified capacity strengthening to selected youth-led networks in ESA using a cohort-phased approach. The goal is to strengthen the organisational, leadership, and technical capacity of youth-led organisations and networks, enabling them to be resilient, effective, and impactful in advancing HIV and SRHR programming.

Objectives

• Understand the capacity needs of youth-led organisations and networks to inform tailored support and planning.
• Provide differentiated capacity-strengthening support based on youth-led organisations’ unique contexts, priorities, and growth stages.
• Mobilise diverse expertise, tools, and resources to deliver responsive and sustainable capacity development support.
• Facilitate access to funding and technical resources to enable implementation of capacity-strengthening plans.
• Promote South-South learning and peer exchange to strengthen collaboration, innovation, and shared strategies for supporting youth-led organisational development.

Benefits

• If selected, your network will benefit from a comprehensive support package, including:
  • Organisational Capacity Assessments: To identify your strengths and areas of growth.
  • Capacity strengthening roadmaps: Co-develop a step-by-step plan to grow your network’s capacity.
  • Custom Capacity Initiatives: Differentiated capacity strengthening approaches to address gaps in your roadmaps through group learning, one-to-one sessions, mentorship, seed funding, etc.
  • Progress Monitoring: Tools and key performance indicators (KPIs) to track your progress, update your roadmap and measure the impact of your growth from the support provided.

Eligibility Criteria

• The UNITED! Movement welcomes applications from youth-led networks or organisations, including AfriYAN ESA Chapters, that meet the following criteria:
  • Youth-Led and Youth Representation:
    • At least 70% of leadership and board members are under age 30 (priority for under 24).
    • The organisation is youth-led in its vision, governance, and operations.
  • Organisational Type:
    • Must be a formally established organisation or network, not an individual or informal group.
  • Core Focus and Mandate:
    • SRHR and HIV must be central to the organisation’s mission and work
  • Geographically based in ESA:
    • Your organisation must be based in and operate within the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) region.
  • Capacity, Motivation and Needs:
    • In your application, describe:
      • Your organisation’s capacity gaps
      • Why are you applying for this support?
      • How will this initiative strengthen your work and impact?

For more information, visit Global Network of Young People Living with HIV.