The world today has the largest generation of young people in history with approximately 1.8 billion between the ages of 10 and 24 years and currently Uganda has the second youngest population in the world with over 78% below 30 years. In 2015 the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), aka the Global Goals as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity while leaving no one behind. Many young people are already driving transformative change, and more are poised to do so, although deep challenges remain. Progress has been uneven with many young people across the globe still experiencing interlocked forms of discrimination, limited inclusion, and high levels of poverty, limited access to health systems, quality educational opportunities and decent jobs among others. UNFPA 2014 confirmed that healthy, educated, productive and fully engaged young people can help break the cycle of intergenerational poverty and are more resilient in the face of individual and societal challenges and their knowledge, reach and innovative solutions are crucial if sustainable development is to be realized. 

This program is aimed at providing effective demand-driven, context-specific and evidence-based policy advice, tools, resources and technical support to young people in primary and secondary schools to enable them acquire necessary knowledge, values and skills that address profound sustainable development challenges and build more prosperous and resilient communities. Under a four (4) phased approach, the initiative will encourage, promote and support school projects developed through active participation and involvement of all students with support from teachers and other actors. All projects will be aligned with SDG goals, targets and indicators with direct impact to the students, school and the community through the School-Community Partnership (SCP). The initiative will support the establishment of student senates (clubs) in all partner schools where leaders and members of the senate will be trained and their capacity built to effectively plan, manage, implement and monitor the school projects. 

The program is implemented in Primary and Secondary schools in Central and Eastern districts of Uganda, the volunteers working on this program will work alongside the local staff at the Kampala and Butaleja offices. 

We expect volunteers to be open minded and actively participate in designing, shaping and sharing experiences. The volunteers shopuld expect to meet and work vibrant youths in schools with maximum support from the local team.

The Students Facilitator on Sustainable Development will support in the following ways

• Organizing and Participating in planning meetings with the school administration and student leaders
• Training students on Sustainable Development Goals and helping them identify projects to implement in schools
• Supporting schools to set up strong school clubs
• Conducting basic trainings for students on project initiation in schools and helping them build life skills
• Organizing school outreaches and debates in schools
• Documenting and making reports.