Youth for Change and Development

Youth for Change and Development (YCD) is a registered charity organization based in Malawi whose headquarters is in the country’s northern region city of Mzuzu. YCD was founded by former in-country Progressio International Citizen Service Volunteers in 2016. Carrying the belief “once a volunteer always a volunteer”, the youthful ex-volunteers saw it fit to carry on with active citizenship. Consequently, the team continued to provide for civic education on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights issues in schools, especially in rural communities, with the aim of reducing the prevalence of Sexually Transmitted Infections.

However, the team could not continue to operate without a proper legal stand. There was a need for a formal charity body which should carry the flag of active citizenship and so the organization was registered in 2017 with the aim of reaching more people countywide. From the beginning of the organization, its founders have been the sole source of funding for its activities seeing as it is a non-profit making entity. Nonetheless, with the coming in of other project activities, the organization relies on fundraising activities and donations from well-wishers to fund for its activities. Currently, YCD’s Major thematic areas include Health and Sanitation, Inclusive Education, Environment and Climate change resilience and awareness. Due to the constrained economic muscle, only the first thematic area is currently operational, with Life Bleed Pride as the first project. The other thematic areas will soon be incorporated into our daily operations.

 

Our mission

Empowering the youth to be self-reliant and responsible citizens of the country.

Our vision

Uplifting and equipping the youth with positive knowledge for a better developed country.
 

Core Values

Honesty : At YCD we believe in being honest about what we are doing. The honesty must be reflected even in the way project outcomes are presented to people who have vested interest in what we do. We accept and communicate about the results the way they are and learn from our failures.

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Patriotism : Patriotism is one ingredient we cannot afford to ignore in all our activities. We believe that there will be no other home apart from where we are. As such it is for our own good to clean every form of mess that we see around. Otherwise, one’s mess will always be someone’s stress.

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Transparency: Just as there is limited motion in the dark, so too it will be in an organization where transparency lacks. We therefore believe in transparency in every form of activity conducted by the organization from administrative work to ground work.

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Responsive : We are living in a world of uncertainty where the planned rarely matches the reality. As such YCD works beyond the planned schedule if need be just to provide for an urgent need without compromising the main planned activities.

Youth Centered : As the name suggests, our main belief is that if young people are empowered for the change we are assured of the permanent change. Thus our activities are centered at working with young people of different backgrounds to achieve community developments.

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We are partners : As a charity organization we believe we cannot achieve everything with our own effort and so relies much on partnering with both individuals, organizations and companies to achieve developmental goals.