Centre for Youth and Development

Centre for Youth and Development is a Malawian Non-government Organization operating in Malawi in conjunction with young people and local communities. It is an organization established to intervene in the fight against poverty eradication that is so prevalent in the country and injustice through participation of young people. The organization was established in the year 2010 to facilitate positive and sustainable change by increasing participation of young people and children in development. The desire to establish such an institution was fuelled by a need to have a facility that will be able to channel the energies of youth towards positive development by pro-actively addressing the educational, financial and social challenges. Our programs are rural based and CYD assists young people and local communities to fight and address the educational, financial and social challenges and to have a voice in decisions that affects their well being.

The vision of CYD is a society characterised by ‘Action’ for sustainability by young people and children. CYD recognizes that children and young people have varying evolving capacities and that they have the right to participate in development and addressing issues affecting them. At the same time, CYD recognises the energies and capabilities that children and young people poses. CYD believes that if these energies and capabilities that young people posses are tapped and meaningfully applied in development, we can achieve the overall sustainable development in Malawi.

The Mission of CYD is to ‘empower’ young people to serve others for sustainable development. CYD underlines the term ‘empowerment’ through; Inspiring: Motivating young people to take action on issues affecting them, Empowerment: Building the capacity of young people to take action on development and issues affecting them, Action: leading people to take action on issues affecting them and Influencing change: in the operating environment. This is where CYD draws the mandate to implement programmes focused on education including literacy to nurture an empowered community that values education and its people are able to improve their livelihood as a result of improved literacy.