In the West, lots of people and organisations are making a big difference fighting some of the major problems facing humanity.

But collectively their attempts often miss something crucial.

Nine out of ten of the world’s young people live in developing countries. They are present in every community, and yet the power they hold to end our biggest problems is being overlooked.

Imagine if we had an alternative way of doing development, where young people could truly lead programmes alongside their communities and solve issues like AIDS and unemployment for good.

The Development Alternative is a new consortium that will co-design alternative ways to do development that are truly led by young people and communities.

What will we do?

The Development Alternative will support youth-centered and youth-led civil society organisations in the global south to design approaches that ensure young people and their communities define, own and lead solutions to the problems they face.

In the next 18 months, we will also work closely with young people and their communities, and youth-led and focused organisations to co-create the strategy, evidence and approaches to an alternative development programme.

The Development Alternative, funded by the UK’s Department for International Development, is being led by Restless Development and coordinated in collaboration with eight partners. The programme will be initially tested in three countries and eventually rolled out in a further five countries.

How can you be involved?

Are you a civil society organisation (CSO) based in the global south?

Our co-design starts with you.

CSOs play a crucial role in informing how alternative approaches to development this could work in practice.