Youth
Youth leadership was a defining force at ICFP 2025, shaping conversations, challenging norms, and advancing a more inclusive vision for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).
Across the ICFP 2025 Youth Summit, Youth Plenary, and Youth Lounge, young people demonstrated that meaningful engagement goes far beyond symbolic participation.
Instead, they called for sustained investment in youth-led solutions, deeper integration of youth voices in technical and decision-making spaces, and stronger protection of youth civic space.
These dynamic forums brought together over 500 young leaders, partners, and funders to explore intergenerational collaboration, elevate innovative youth-driven approaches, and spotlight the persistent funding and structural barriers facing youth-led organizations.
The following highlights capture the key moments, insights, and calls to action that emerged from youth engagement throughout ICFP 2025.
Youth Subcommittee
The ICFP Youth Subcommittee transformed the landscape of youth engagement at ICFP, centering authentic youth leadership, creative advocacy, and intergenerational collaboration.
In addition to planning and implementing the ICFP 2025 Youth Summit, Youth Plenary, and Youth Lounge (details below), the ICFP Youth Subcommittee helped review all DKT Phil Harvey SRHR Innovation Award nominations. This award celebrates emerging leaders who are advancing access to SRHR through bold, sex-positive, and rights-based approaches.
ICFP Youth Subcommittee members also selected the winners of the Grassroots Action Leader Award. This award spotlights leaders who work directly with marginalized groups and champion gender-sensitive and equity-centered approaches.
Overall, the ICFP Youth Subcommittee significantly strengthened the youth movement in SRHR and family planning, making it more unified, hopeful, and resilient.
Youth Summit
The ICFP 2025 Youth Summit convened over 500 participants, bringing together young leaders and partners to reimagine what meaningful intergenerational collaboration can look like in practice.
Through youth-led plenaries, Arts4Advocacy sessions, and interactive breakout rooms, young people shared bold ideas grounded in lived experience, creativity, and community leadership proving that youth are not just participants, but drivers of change in SRHR.
Across the Youth Summit, youth articulated ideas such as:
- Centering equity and Indigenous knowledge
- Scaling self-care as a core approach across HIV and family planning
- Integrating rights-based and GBV-responsive programming
- Investing in youth-led organizations and entrepreneurs
- Strengthening safe and inclusive digital platforms
- Building cross-sector partnerships that connect health, climate, education, faith, and humanitarian systems.
Participants also emphasized the power of storytelling, creative expression, and non-traditional partnerships to translate evidence into action in ways that resonate with communities.
These ideas can become reality but only if youth and partners are ready to work together, share power, and commit resources beyond the Youth Summit.
The next challenge is moving from inspiration to implementation: investing in youth leadership, sustaining intergenerational collaboration, and turning shared commitments into action that delivers real impact in communities.
Youth Plenary
The ICFP Youth Plenary, which took place on the final day of the ICFP 2025 conference program, was a vibrant and inspiring event that showcased the power and resilience of young people in the SRHR movement.
The overarching theme of the plenary was the importance of intergenerational collaboration and the need to move beyond symbolic youth participation towards deeper, more technical engagement and intentional investments for youth-led SRHR.
Beyond Symbolism
Youth Plenary panelists reminded us that the field must move beyond symbolic participation toward meaningful, mainstreamed engagement of adolescents and young people—including in technical and decision-making spaces.
The panel discussions delved into the funding challenges that youth-led organizations face and how youth-led organizations like CHOICE for Youth from the Netherlands navigated budget cuts by staying true to their principles and leveraging their creativity and community connections.
Without a doubt, more and more funders are recognizing the importance of not only co-designing SRHR interventions with young people, but also giving them the opportunities–and skills–to lead programs. And yet, donors still fail to make deliberate efforts and investments in these solutions.
Honoring Youth Leaders
To showcase and honor youth-led innovations, the Youth Plenary also featured the DKT Phil Harvey Award ceremony, in which three young leaders in SRHR received funding and recognition for their groundbreaking projects in Kenya, Lebanon, and Nigeria.
Youth Lounge
The Youth Lounge at ICFP 2025 was intentionally designed as a dynamic, youth-led space for networking, knowledge exchange, mentorship, and collective care—bringing equity to life beyond formal sessions.
Supported by Tiko, Johns Hopkins Center for Communications Programs (CCP), and the PUSH Campaign by International Confederation of Midwives (ICM), the Youth Lounge hosted dialogues, creative expression, and a special convening of 120 Under-40 leaders, creating space for young people from diverse backgrounds to connect, reflect, and shape the future of SRHR through lived experience, joy, and shared leadership.
Protection of Youth Civic Spaces
Through connections made in the Youth Lounge, participants are co-creating a Youth Equity Manifesto and a Youth Lounge Toolkit, grounding the ICFP 2025 theme Equity Through Action in concrete commitments.
This ongoing process centers youth leadership, calling for:
- Institutionalized youth-led spaces
- Investment in creativity as advocacy
- Intentional inclusion of the most marginalized young people
- Accessible translation of evidence
- Protection of youth civic space and bodily autonomy
- Accountability beyond the conference.
Together, these evolving outputs sustain dialogue, strengthen youth power, and ensure equity is practiced—not just promised.
Reflections from ICFP 2025 Youth
Youth Photo Gallery
Get a closer look at youth leadership in action at ICFP 2025 through our Youth Summit Photo Gallery.
These moments highlight how youth participants from around the world influenced key spaces, contributed to sessions, and made key connections at ICFP.
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