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Power to Youth: Strengthening Innovation from the Ground Up
- Lisanne
- Power to Youth Program
- February 20, 2026
Situation
The Power to Youth (PTY) program aims to ensure adolescent girls and young women meaningfully shape decisions on harmful practices, SGBV and unintended pregnancies. Yet a 2022 partnership survey revealed that many country teams lacked the confidence and skills to innovate. Teams struggled to generate ideas, run pilots or use co-creation and human-centered design methods beyond initial proposal development.
Assignment
Proportion Global was asked to design and deliver a multi-country HCD learning trajectory that would strengthen innovation capabilities across Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Ghana, Senegal and Indonesia. The goal was to equip program staff with practical HCD skills, build creative confidence and prepare teams to design digital, youth-centered solutions rooted in real community insights.
Approach
A decentralised team of senior local HCD experts led in-person training, on-the-job coaching and iterative design sprints. Each country team conducted field research, synthesized insights, co-created ideas, developed low-fidelity prototypes and validated them with youth groups and stakeholders. Cross-country learning ensured stronger reflection and shared progress.
Result
Teams developed contextually grounded solution concepts, grew their creative confidence and became capable of designing and delivering innovations through a full HCD cycle, supported by Proportion Global’s local expertise.