A “Me to We” Journey

Chocolate gift from ACTIVATE!

ACTIVATE! and Pravah recognize the immense potential of youth-led social networks in driving meaningful change in society. Social network theory focuses on the role of social relationships in transmitting information, channeling personal or media influence, and enabling attitudinal or behavioural change. The ACTIVATE! Pravah exchange programme has provided 5 Activators from ACTIVATE! Change Drivers and 5 youth volunteers from Pravah with an opportunity for cross-cultural learning and knowledge sharing. Participants in this important programme were selected on the basis of their community participation in their respective countries. This is in recognition of the agency and potential of young people to contribute meaningfully towards addressing challenges affecting the world today. Young people represent real potential to drive meaningful change in society and this potential must be nurtured and developed in order to ensure that young people take their place as engaged global citizens in an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world. An important component of the ACTIVATE! Pravah exchange programme is that of creating an enabling platform young people from different cultural, economic and social backgrounds to share knowledge and experience in order to enhance their capacity and agency to drive change for public good. Youth social networks are important insofar as they have a potential of initiating change in communities. In essence, the ACTIVATE! Pravah exchange programme draws from the youth social network theory in its assumption that if youth are provided with a provocative platform to meet, connect and be equipped then they can influence change in their communities. The ripples effect of change is central to the work of ACTIVATE! Change Drivers, and similarly the core of Pravah’s youth development work is the idea of “We to Thee”. Both these ideas are essentially grounded in empowering youth in order for them to positively contribute towards transforming their communities. Norec’s Programme Adviser Hendrick Dale captures the essence of the ACTIVATE! Pravah exchange programme by stating that “Our aim

with the exchanges we fund is to create change at three levels by benefitting the individual, the organisations involved and on a community level – that is Norec’s Theory of Change. The individual on the exchange learns new skills. Young people are not aware of what they’re capable of, the skills they learn are beneficial and they can use them at home. Then the exchange of bestpractice between the organisations strengthens their capacity. On a community level, the organisations Norec supports works with and provides services to their local communities and so we hope these exchanges will lead to improved outcomes for the communities.”

“Our most important core value is reciprocity (the practice of exchanging things with others for mutual benefit). We don’t want one organisation to send volunteers to teach and the other organisation must learn. We want it to be reciprocal. Both organisations have lots of skills that can benefit each other, in this case both organisations have as much to teach as they have to gain from that partnership. Pravah’s mission of strengthening the self, which in turn strengthens the community and ACTIVATE!’s strength in how they have built and sustained the alumni network, we saw that both organisations could benefit and exchange knowledge,” he adds. Neeru, says, At the beginning we thought although we had the same core focus, the way we did things was different, with Pravah’s

strong focus on the self. It was very interesting because as we worked together we found the activities our organisations did - and ultimately the learnings they created - were actually very similar. One of the ways our differences manifests is the amount of oneon-one mentoring conversations Pravah has with our volunteers due to the introspective aspect of Pravah’s work. This surprised

ACTIVATE! participants, says Neeru. “We find that if we do not connect with them, which is about them personally not about the

project, they feel demotivated very easily,”

Our volunteers learnt a lot from the cross-cultural engagement, working out the dynamics and learning to live with others and working at the ACTIVATE! Academy. They appreciated the different approach ACTIVATE! uses. There was a lot of focus on building a curriculum for the Academy, which they enjoyed and learnt a lot from because it’s not something they’d done before with Pravah. They learnt from the difference in approach and methodology.” Tebogo Supping, Network Director, says, ACTIVATE!’s strength is the strong network of Activators and our expansive reach across the country. “We have managed to build up a diverse network of young people who come from very different backgrounds. This is

something Pravah is interested in doing in India.”