SA-CYD: Children and Youth with Disabilities
Young people with disabilities are rights-holders, advocates, and agents of change. SA-CYD gives them the skills and platforms to prove it.
Children and young people with disabilities are among the most excluded in Southern Africa. They are kept out of schools, left out of health services, and rarely consulted on decisions that affect their lives. In policy spaces — where those decisions get made — their voices are almost never heard.
#Inclusive Young Voices (#IYV)
Funded by UNICEF and implemented with national affiliates in five countries. The project targets children and youth with disabilities aged 15 to 24. It gives them the skills and platforms to advocate for themselves — including on social media and online, where advocacy is happening today.
- Online training of 20 Youth Ambassadors — four per country — in social media skills and disability rights advocacy.
- Youth dialogues in all five pilot countries, where children and young people with disabilities identified key issues and developed Calls to Action for governments and duty bearers.
- Engagement meetings with members of parliament, ministers, and local councillors — giving young people direct access to those with power to act.
- A survey on how children with disabilities use social media for advocacy, generating evidence to guide training and support.
- Development of SAFOD's child safeguarding policy, ensuring work with young people meets clear standards of protection and accountability.
Build skills.
Provide a platform.
Connect with decision-makers.
Scale across all 16 SADC states.
The disability rights movement cannot be sustained without the next generation. When young people with disabilities speak for themselves — to ministers, on social media, in policy forums — they change what is possible.