The 2024 Advancing Development Goals International Contest for Graduate Students aims to present innovative and pragmatic solutions to address the challenges of youth empowerment
Eager to stimulate reflection and innovation on development issues from diverse disciplinary and contextual perspectives and with the generous support of Ambassador Jenö Staehelin, the Graduate Institute launched the Advancing Development Goals Contest, an international competition for Master students, in 2014.
The idea is to gather contributions that are both theoretically grounded and offer pragmatic solutions to a relevant international development problem stemming from an interdisciplinary collaboration between three to five enrolled master students from anywhere in the world.
Learn more about the contest here.
Today, there are 1.8 billion youth, the largest generation of young people in history. As the late Kofi Annan, former High Patron of the Geneva Challenge, noted, “Any society that does not succeed in tapping into the energy and creativity of its youth will be left behind.”
Young people, however, face many barriers to their empowerment. For instance, more than 333 million children live in extreme poverty and 1 billion lack access to safe drinking water and nutritious food. Two hundred fifty million children were out of school in 2023 and 600 million lacked basic literacy and numeracy. Unequal access to technology during the COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated inequalities in access to education – and youth unemployment continues to climb. Furthermore, climate change is expected to impact today’s youth and future generations particularly.
Mntase Cares – Mobile Clinics for Youth Empowerment: Teenage pregnancy in South Africa is a growing crisis, with rising prevalence rates across all nine provinces, contributing to severe health risks, interrupted education, financial hardship, and entrenched cycles of poverty. These challenges undermine individual futures and perpetuate socio-economic inequality on a national scale. The “Mntase Cares” project provides a transformative solution aligned with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3: Good Health and Well-being, tackling this urgent issue by delivering holistic reproductive health services directly to underserved youth. Through mobile clinics equipped with contraceptive options, reproductive health education, and mentorship for girls and boys aged 10 to 24, the project empowers young people to make informed decisions about their futures. Targeting remote and underserved communities, these clinics break down barriers of stigma and limited healthcare access. By incorporating cutting-edge telehealth services and a GPT-based tool for on-demand information and support, the project ensures that youth are informed and connected to a larger care network. By advancing SDG 5: Gender Equality and SDG 4: Quality Education, the project strives for sustainable change—reducing teenage pregnancy, improving educational outcomes, and unlocking economic opportunities.
DigiBridge: Empowering Youth through Specialised E-commerce Education to Bridge the Digital Literacy Gap and Accelerate Economic Development in Rural Areas – A Case Study on Cambodia: This project aims to address the critical issue of youth empowerment in the digital age. It centres on the persona of Dina, a young woman from Kratie Province, Cambodia, whose family business struggles to adapt to the digital economy due to a lack of digital literacy and resources. DigiBridge envisions creating a digitally inclusive society where every young person has the opportunity, skills, and access to participate fully in the digital economy. The project targets youth in rural areas, female youth, and youth engaged in the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), aiming to reduce poverty, promote quality education, and foster sustainable economic growth. The program includes comprehensive digital literacy and skills training, a specialised digital skills curriculum for e-commerce, marketing, and finance, and the establishment of support networks for youth like Dina. With the support of private sector investments, government grants, and international organisations, DigiBridge aims to create a scalable model that can be adapted to various contexts, ultimately empowering youth like Dina and driving economic development in rural areas worldwide.
Project REACH: Improving Access to Education for Youth in IDP Camps: The Resilient Education for Advancing Camp Horizons (REACH) project is a value-driven, human-centred, and self-sustaining initiative that aims to improve educational outcomes for youth in Internally Displaced Persons’ (IDP) camps. The project will provide the normalcy of learning to Nigerian youth displaced by conflict, natural disasters, and socioeconomic instability, ensuring that they can be successfully assimilated back into formal education. With a focus on the Junior Secondary level of Nigeria’s education system, the three-pronged approach of Project REACH involves developing and deploying solar-powered mobile learning units to IDP camps (‘Schools on Wheels’); identifying and training high-literacy youth in these camps (‘Training the Trainers’); and empowering them to educate their fellow youth of lower literacy levels (‘Peers to Peers’), all facilitated by an offline REACH app installed on bespoke mobile devices. Additionally, REACH will provide extensive support through periodic visits and feedback fora to guarantee the effectiveness of the learning process. Project REACH will be piloted across four IDP camps in North-Eastern Nigeria, with the support of key stakeholders across the public and private sectors and civil society. In the long term, Project REACH will establish a new paradigm for providing innovative educational solutions to IDP camps, while closing the pipeline of youth involvement in social vices and opening the pathway for youth-led social change.
YOUTHXPORT: Young entrepreneurs in Latin America encounter substantial challenges, particularly in accessing international trade opportunities. They often struggle with limited financing, insufficient experience, weak networks, and bureaucratic obstacles that impede their growth and success. Additionally, these challenges are compounded by a regional context characterised by high youth unemployment, widespread informality, and unequal access to opportunities. To address these barriers and challenges, we propose the creation of "YouthXport," a free mobile application whose mission is to empower these young entrepreneurs and motivate them to export and import products to and from their countries of origin, seeking to solve problems related to international logistics and customs in each country. This application allows them to manage their operations from the comfort of their homes, ensuring 100% compliance and security in the supply chain, without the need for prior investment. In addition, we will provide advice and seek the collaboration of professionals, large companies and governments, generating alliances that support this cause.
BESI: Behavioral Education for IFA Supplementation Intervention: Iron deficiency anaemia (IDA) disproportionately affects adolescent girls worldwide, threatening their future given its long-term health consequences on reproductive capability as well as productivity and overall well-being. Despite global efforts to combat anaemia through iron folic acid (IFA) supplementation, adherence remains a challenge due to various individual and environmental factors. The BESI project aims to address the challenge by promoting cross-generation empowerment among women. The project will pair adolescent girls and pregnant women through a mobile platform, allowing for more effective IFA supplementation uptake and health monitoring that both parties need. Additionally, BESI will integrate IFA consumption with oranges in schools to address barriers to IFA intake and leverage the school environment to influence positive behavioural changes. A one academic-semester project will be piloted in Indonesia, a country with one of the highest anaemia cases among reproductive-age women. The focus will be on students in the Low-Cost Private Schools (LCPS), as they are highly marginalised due to their socioeconomic disadvantage and the schools’ lack of public funding.
