ICFP Youth Subcommittee
This community is dedicated to elevating the voices, experiences, and power of youth in SRHR worldwide.
FAQ
What Do You Do?
The ICFP Youth Subcommittee works to ensure meaningful youth engagement across the ICFP platform and conference. The subcommittee amplifies young people’s voices, supports youth leadership in sexual and reproductive health and rights, and helps shape youth-focused content, programming, and participation at the ICFP 2025 conference and beyond.
Who is Involved?
The ICFP Youth Subcommittee includes diverse young leaders and advocates from around the world who are passionate about advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights. Members come from youth-led organizations, advocacy groups, academia, and the broader SRHR community.
Contact
For more information about the ICFP 2025 Youth Subcommittee, please contact youth@theicfp.org, the official email for all youth-related activities. You may contact the ICFP Secretariat at info@theicfp.org.
About This Subcommittee
Global youth leaders championing family planning and sexual and reproductive health and rights
The ICFP Youth Subcommittee brings together young people from around the world with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and expertise to advance the sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice agenda.
The ICFP Youth Subcommittee organizes the ICFP Youth Pre-conference, which covers concepts around human rights, inclusivity, justice, identity diversity, and gender equity.
This subcommittee meets year-round to ensure youth are at the forefront of all aspects of the the ICFP community, movement, and platform.
ICFP 2025
Youth Subcommittee Recap
The Youth Subcommittee transformed the landscape of youth engagement at ICFP 2025 by centering authentic youth leadership, creative advocacy, and intergenerational collaboration. The subcommittee’s work moved beyond tokenistic youth participation to create genuine platforms for young leaders to shape conversations, influence policy, and drive innovation in sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Major Events, Activities, and Impact
ICFP Youth Summit 2025
The Youth Summit stood out for its strong emphasis on intergenerational collaboration, intentionally creating dialogue spaces between youth leaders and senior practitioners. For the first time, the summit selected and spotlighted Grassroots Action Leaders through Drumbeat events, ensuring local, community-based youth leadership received meaningful recognition. Arts4Advocacy sessions brought powerful storytelling and artistic expression as new pathways for influencing policy and practice.
LAC Youth Movement Engagement
The Latin America and Caribbean Youth Movement’s leadership and mobilization efforts made the Youth Summit particularly vibrant, bringing fresh energy and meaningfully engaging young people from the region, expanding visibility and collective action across geographic boundaries.
Phil Harvey SRHR Innovation Award
Youth Subcommittee members participated in reviewing Phil Harvey SRHR Innovation Award winners, gaining valuable experience in identifying and uplifting innovative, youth-led solutions.
Impact
The Youth Subcommittee significantly strengthened the youth movement in SRHR and family planning, making it more unified, hopeful, and resilient. The conference uplifted emerging youth-led groups like Arts4Advocacy and significantly strengthened the LAC Youth Network, expanding visibility, collaboration, and collective action across regions. The Youth Summit gained wide visibility within the ICFP community, contributing to increased engagement, capacity building, and momentum for youth-led advocacy.
Key Takeaways
Indigenous Knowledge and Lived Experience Are Critical Evidence
Youth emphasized centering Indigenous knowledge and lived realities in SRHR and climate action. Empathy, storytelling, and photo-voicing are critical forms of evidence for advocacy and policy influence, challenging traditional hierarchies of what counts as expertise.
Investment Must Be Flexible and Long-Term
Young leaders need flexible, long-term investment in youth-led organizations and entrepreneurs—not just short-term project funding. Genuine intergenerational partnerships require shared power and accountability, not advisory roles without decision-making authority.
Cross-Sector Partnerships Drive Innovation
Youth leaders called for stronger cross-sector partnerships linking climate, health, education, faith, and humanitarian systems. Youth-led pathways like Arts4Advocacy demonstrate how non-traditional partnerships can translate evidence into action more effectively.
Digital Safety and Literacy Are Foundational
Young people need stronger digital literacy support and safe digital platforms for SRHR learning and organizing, particularly as anti-rights movements increasingly operate in digital spaces.
Powerful Voices
“It was inspiring to see such strong youth leadership shape the program and overall conference experience. Everyone brought passion, creativity, and innovation to their work.”
Call to Action
For Funders and Organizations:
Move beyond rhetoric to resource redistribution. Provide flexible, multi-year funding that supports youth-led organizations to build sustainable infrastructure, not just implement discrete projects.
For Program Designers:
Integrate gender-based violence, disability, and rights-based indicators across all SRHR programming. Ensure youth are decision-makers in program design, not just beneficiaries or advisors.
For the ICFP Community:
Continue youth engagement through storytelling features, cross-subcommittee collaboration, and virtual convenings. The subcommittee proposes a monthly blog series on key insights and selective webinars co-hosted with youth-led organizations.
Meet the ICFP Community
The ICFP platform is anchored by 11 dynamic subcommittees, bringing together individuals and organizations from across the global sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) community.
