Entrants's Name: Christine Norton

Country: Panama

Field: Learning/Youth Development

Innovation - idea: Development of a set of principles and practices to network young people in the English-speaking Caribbean using music, sport, art and theatre as an entry point to adopt a positive lifestyle and prevent violence.

href="http://www.unicef.org/lac/xchange(1).pdf" target="new">www.unicef.org/lac/xchange(1).pdf

Innovation - why it is pioneering: Across 7 Caribbean countries(soon to be 8)the idea of Xchange was adapted by youth and successfully maintains strong youth leadership. In addition, after 9 months, youth were demonstrating positive developmental behaviours based on an external assessment. Young leaders have emerged adopting the same learned practices and principles instilled over just one week of intensive training.

Strategy - how it achieves impact: Youth were trained in a one-week workshop setting in which adolescents from Brazil using music, sport and art demonstrated how their programmes achieved success. Additional training including lifeskills, gender equality, identity and action planning were shared over a single week which culminated in a live concert with key artists. Country participants returned to their individual islands replicating and adapting in some cases the process of "training-exchanges-inspirational event-action planning". The result was that in each country community- based social change activities have emerged through individual projects led by young people and supported by UNICEF. Now, grants are being offered to support the best youth proposals based on an assessment by the young people themselves. An online community was initiated by the young people to provide peer support,communication and outreach. Scale is possible and of interest to young people but funding limited.

Strategy - growth plans: Xchange was piloted in 7 countries through the identification of a group of leaders from each island who were then trained as trainers. Xchange continues to attract attention and interest of young people by using the media they love. In December, another country will join and yet another island to the north of the Caribbean has recently asked for support. To maintain the quality of Xchange the young leaders have agreed that a set of principles and practices must be maintained and a communications package is currently being developed to inform but also to guide programme development. The intention is to establish Xchange as an entity able to exists on its own without UNICEF support in the Caribbean. This entity will support new youth initiatives by providing guidance and identifying practices to maintain technical soundness. Wider dissemination is limited by the inability to raise resources for the Caribbean for capacity building and exchanges

Impact to date: Xchange has inspired most of all its key beneficiaries..young people. An assessment demonstrated that Xchange was able to build a strong network of young leaders across Caribbean territories (which is always challenging) and to inspire young people to develop innovations around the original idea of Xchange. Some young people have started up their own initiatives to improve their community and to help create a better quality of life for their peers. Xchange continues to expand simply by inspiring others in other islands to adopt the process.

Future impact: Ten years from now Xchangers would be in their thirties and many of them will be social entrepreneurs in their own right. They would be more conscious people who have a desire to contribute to their societies and find solutions to address their own problems and that of their community. Some will be role models for their peers and others will probably find a place in public life. The hope is that this movement will reduce the negativity around youth and will help young people in the Caribbean to find their rightful place among the decision-makers of the region.

Sustainability - resource base: Sustainability remains a challenge for this still young initiative. Xchange attracts citizen support quite widely as well as volunteerism and strategic partnerships. The more difficult aspects however include finding ways to be self-sustaining. The goal is become less dependent on donor funding. Each initiative in each island is different but with a common set of principles and therefore sustainability will need to be determined on an individual basis. The young people involved have been very creative but more time is required.

Major challenge for the field: The major challenge for the field is creating the space for young people to be seen as having solutions to problems that affect them. Another important challenge would be the policies that would provide them the financial means to take forward their ideas for social change. Young people want to contribute to their societies and do not want to known as perpetrators of violence or "hard to handle"

Contact Information:

Name: Ms Christine Norton - Regional Advisor, Adolescent Development
Mailing address: Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean - Balboa, Ancon - Panama
Country: Panama
Email: cnorton@unicef.org
Tel: 507-301-7418
Fax: 507-317-0258
Website: www.unicef.org/lac

Bio: Advisor, Adolescent Development and Gender Equality in the UNICEF Office for Latin America and the Caribbean. I have worked for 26 years with various UN agencies and have been a strong advocate for adolescent rights. I developed the original concept paper on Xchange for UNICEF to interpret into a workable form the interest of two private sector partners who expressed interest in working with young people using music (Machel Montano, Entertainer,Xtatik Ltd and Derrick Lewis,Creative Director, Island People). Since then the original concept has been inspired by young people and UNICEF colleagues. Since 2000, I personally developed an interest in social entrepreneurial work when I was inspired by an article on the Changemakers website on Afroreggae in Brazil. I decided to pursue that relationship and find Afroreggae for the benefit of finding solutions to reach the most marginalised young people. That resulted in an intiative called Xpression - a brainstorming session which brought together "out-of-the-box" experiences from across the world to Trinidad. Xpression was the precursor of Xchange and gave the impetus to pursue the use of music, arts and sports as an entry point to reach young people. In that process I came into contact with other entrepreneurial initiatives using music, arts and sports: Pracatum (Salvador de Bahia), and Aprendiz (Sao Paolo), DanseBrazil (Salvador de Bahia) and many others such as Projet Axe in Bahia. I have sought to understand how they approached the most marginalised and excluded young boys and girls and turned around their lives. Marrying these experiences with the more traditional social change experiences of UNICEF has supported holds a lot of potential for scale and sustainability in the long run. The creativity and innovation however needs to be left to young people themselves. My job is just to bring the pieces together across country offices and to inspire and encourage young people for social change.